Leopardi is considered the greatest Italian poet of the 19th century and one of the most important figures in the literature of the world, as well as one of the most renowned Romantics; his constant reflection on existence and on the human condition - of sensuous and materialist inspiration - has also earned him a reputation as a deep philosopher. He is widely seen as one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century, but generally compared to his older contemporary, Alessandro Manzoni, despite expressing completely opposite positions. Although he lived in a secluded town in the conservative Papal States, he came into contact with the main ideas of the Enlightenment, and through his own literary evolution, created a outstanding poetic work, related to the Romantic era. Read here.
His themes are mutability, landscape, love; his attitude, one of unflinching realism in the face of unavoidable human loss. But the manners of the poems are an amalgam of philosophical toughness and the lyrically bittersweet. In a way more pure and distilled than most others in the Western tradition, his poems are truly what Matthew Arnold asked all poetry to be, a “criticism of life.”
Leopardi was a contemporary of the great English
Romantic poets such as Shelley, Keats and Byron who lived in Italy, though he never had the
chance to meet them. Read here.
In 1836, while staying near Torre del Greco in a villa on the hillside of Mt. Vesuvius, Leopardi wrote his moral testament as a poet, La Ginestra, also known as Il Fiore del Deserto. The poem consists of 317 lines. It is the longest of all the Canti and has an unusual beginning. In fact, among all the Leopardian canti only this one begins with a scene of desolation, to be followed by an alternation between the enchantment of the panorama and of the starry night sky.
After having described the nothingness
of the world and of man with regard to the universe, after having lamented the
precariousness of the human condition threatened by the capriciousness of
Nature, not as exceptional evils but as continuous and constant and after
having satirized the arrogance and the ingenuousness of man, who encourages
ideas of progress and hopes, even while knowing he is mortal, to render himself
eternal, Leopardi concludes with the observation that reciprocal solidarity is
the only defence against the common enemy which is Nature.
In this canto, in which Leopardi
expresses his vast thought about mankind, history, and nature, autobiographical
elements can be found: both direct (the places described are those who surround
the poet in his late years) and indirect, in the image of a man who is poor,
weak, but courageous enough to be aware of his real condition. The humble plant
of broom, living in desolate places without surrendering to the force of
Nature, resembles this ideal man, who rejects any illusions about himself and
does not invoke an impossible help from Heaven or Nature.
Mt. Vesuvius, the great mountain
which brings destruction, dominates the entire poem. The only achievable truth
is death, toward which man must unquestionably advance, abandoning every illusion
and becoming conscious of his own miserable condition. Such awareness will
pacify the mutual hates.
It is a vast poem, symphonically
constructed with alternations of tone, from the grandiose and tragic
painting of the volcano threatening destruction and of extensions of infertile
lava, to the sharp ideological argumentation, to the cosmic sparks which
project the nothingness of the earth and of man in the immensity of the
universe, to the vision of the infinite passage of centuries of human history
on which the endless threat of Nature has always weighed, to the gentle notes
dedicated to the "flower in the desert", in which are compressed
complex symbolic meanings: pity toward the sufferings of man and the dignity
which should be characteristic of man when confronted with the unconquerable
force of a Nature which destroys him.
Since life is a “common war” against
Nature’s ravages, there should be no room for hatred in the
world - despair should lead to brotherhood and
solidarity, thus humans could at least attain some dignity.
An essential change occurs with this
poem, which closes the poetic career of Leopardi: it reaffirms his
anti-optimism, but the poet no longer rejects the possibility
of civic progress, he seeks to construct an idea of progress founded
precisely on his pessimism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Leopardi
http://www.uberaura.it/it/literature/leopardi-when-pessimism-is-not-so-pessimistic/2
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/25/under-the-volcano-adam-kirsch
http://www.tclt.org.uk/leopardi/Canti_2011.pdf
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