Conte Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)

[Sergius]

Conte Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)

Italian scholar, poet, and philosopher, one of the great writers of the 19th century. Leopardi was a contemporary of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, with whom he shared a similar pessimistic view of life. Leopardi's love problems inspired some of his saddest lyrics. In his late years, when he lived on the slopes of Vesuvius, Leopardi meditated upon the possibility of the total destruction of humankind.

Nature has no more care
Or praise for human souls
Than for the ants: and as she slaughters men
Less terribly than them,
This is no great wonder,
For man's fecundity and ants' are worlds asunder.
(from 'The Broom')

Giacomo Leopardi was born in Recanati, Papal States. His father, Count Monaldo Leopardi, was the last nobleman in Italy to wear a sword. When his extravagance threatened to ruin the family, he turned the management of his affairs over to an agent of his wife, Adelaide. From the age of six, Leopardi dressed in black like his father. He studied privately with tutors showing remarkable talents from an early age. By the age of 16 he had mastered Greek, Latin, and several modern languages. He had also translated many classical works and written two tragedies and many poems. In his early poems, such as 'All' Italia' and 'Sul monumento di Dante' Leopardi expressed his love for Italy, and bewailed her abasement among ruins telling of her past greatness. "What bruises and what blood! How do I see thee, / Thou loveliest Lady! Unto Heaven I cry, / And to the world: "Say, say, / What brought her unto this?" To this and worse / ..." (from To Italy) . Saggio sugli errori popolari degli antichi, written in 1815, but published in 1846, were essays on the popular mistakes of the Ancients. During this early creative period his health broke down, and he developed a cerebrospinal condition that afflicted him all his life. He also had problems with his sight and he eventually became blind in one eye.

Leopardi's parents were proud of his achievements, but on the other hand his father was not happy about his son's liberal views. Count Leopardi wrote religious pamphlets and was a reactionary - his son loved liberty. However, Leopardi was encouraged to use his father's large library and its 20 000 books. Because of his physical deformities, Leopardi found it difficult to associate with women. His frustrated love for his cousin Gertrude Cassi produced the elegy 'Il primo amore'. She was married, 27-years old, and she stayed in Recanati for only a few days. Terese Fattorini's death from consumption was behind the sad mood of 'A Silvia', written in Pisa in 1828. The poem begins with nostalgic images of youth, happiness, and singing. "I, leaving my fair studies, / Leaving my manuscripts and toil-stained volumes (...) / Leaned sometimes idly from my father's windows / And listened to the music of thy singing (...)" Silvia's death in the Autumn coincides with the disillusionment of the poet. In Zibaldone ("hodge-podge"), containing 4500 pages, Leopardi recorded his thoughts on philosophy, language, art and politics. He kept the diary from July 1817 to December 1832.

Recanti, with its 17 churches, became a prison for Leopardi, who wanted to leave his native city. However, his correspondence with professor Giordani, a famous scholar, offered some comfort. Giordani became his friend, who helped him in the following years. After reading Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther he contemplated suicide. The story depicts a young man who loves his friend's betrothed, and commits suicide. In 1822-23 Leopardi lived in Rome. He hated the town, despised the Roman women, and lived mostly among Germans. His verse collection Cazoni was published in 1824. In 1825-26 he lived in Bologna and Florence and accepted an offer to edit Cicero's works. He also earned extra income as a tutor. Leopardi's works from the 1820s include Versi (1826) and Operette morali (1827), a disillusioned collection of dialogues after the manner of the Greek satirist Lucian. It was the only major work of prose that Leopardi published in his lifetime. Although Alessandro Manzioni, another great poet of the time, gave it a favorable notice, it was largely ignored by Leopardi's readers. Between the years 1825 and 1828 he wrote for Fortunato Stella publishers.

In 1830 Leopardi left his home in Recanti. He took up residence in Florence and in 1833 Leopardi settled in Naples, where he wrote Ginestra (1836). Again he fell hopelessly in love - this time with Fanny, the wife of professor Targioni-Tozzeti. He also started to work on his Pensieri (thoughts), patterned after the Maximes of the French writer La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680). For the last years his close friends were Antonio Ranieri and his sister Paolona Ranieri. In 1836 they moved into the villa Ferrigni on the slopes of Vesuvius, about fifteen miles from Naples. Leopardi died of edema on June 14, 1837 in Naples. Ranieri said of his friend: "His whole life was not a career like that of most men; it was truly a precipitate course towards death." According to Ranieri, Leopardi never had physical sexual experiences with women.

Many of the representatives of romanticism - Leopardi, Byron, Shelley, Lermontov and so forth - were members of aristocratic families and manifested aristocratic views to some extent, and also were inspired by ideas of freedom. But while Byron had an active public role, Leopardi lived an interior life. Byron was adored by women but Leopardi's romantic dreams never had fulfillment. He was convinced that ladies laughed at him. Byron created from his feelings of homelessness and loneliness a romantic hero, a mysterious man with a secret in his past. Leopardi could never escape the curse of his own ill health, and suffering became for him the essence and natural order of nature. Finally it led to the misogyny of the 'Ode on the Likeness of a Beautiful Woman Carven on Her Tomb', written in the winter of 1834-35: "That breast, which visibly / Blanched with beauty him who looked on it - / All these things were, and now / Dust art thou, filth, a fell / And hideous sight hidden beneath a stone."

For further reading: Leopardi: A Biography by Iris Origo (1935); Poesia e filosofia di Giacomo Leopardi by G. Gentile (1940); L'elaborazione della lirica leopardiana by P. Bigongiari (1948): La filologia di Giacomo Leopardi by S. Timpanaro (1955), Titanismo e pietà in Giacomo Leopardi by U. Bosco (1957); Linguaggio del vero in Leopardi by C. Galimberti (1959); La nuova poetica leopardiana by W. Binni (1962); Leopardi and the Theory of Poetry by G. Singh (1964); Storia del riso leopardiano by G. Marzot (1966); Saggi leopardiani by G. Getto (1966); Frammenti critici leopardiani by A. Monteverdi (1967); Night and the Sublime in Giacomo Leopardi by Nicholas James Perella (1970); A Fragrance from the Desert by Daniela Bibi (1983); Giacomo Leopardi by Gian Piero Barricelli (1986) - For further information: Little Blue Light

Selected works:

* 'All' Italia', 1819
* 'Sul monumento di Dante', 1819
* Canzoni i versi, 1824
* Versi, 1826
* Operette morali, 1827 - Essays and Dialogues
* Canti, 1831
* Ginestra, 1836
* Opere, 1845-49
* Pensieri, 1845 (in Opere, vol. 1)
* Saggio sugli errori popolari degli antichi, 1846 (in Opere, vol. 4)
* I canti di Giacomo Leopardi, 1982
* Le prose morali, 1895
* Zibaldone, 1898-1900 (7 vols.; Pensieri di varia filosofia e di bella letteratura)
* Discorso di un italiano alla poesia romantica, 1906
* Puerilia e abozzi vari, 1924
* Puerilia e abozzi, 1925
* Opere, 1927-31
* Epistolario, 1934-41
* Opere, 1945
* Opere, 1937-49
* Opere scelte, 1950
* Selected Prose and Poetry, 1966
* Poems and Prose, 1966
* Tutte le opere, 1968-73 (5 vols.)
* The Poems of Leopardi, 1973 (ed. by Geoffrey L. Bickersteth)
* Poesie e prose, 1987-88 (2 vols.)
[source]