Giacomo Leopardi

“ It would appear that during his sojourn at Bologna he had not been insensible to the attractions of love, but love could be for him nothing but a source of torment; and, as his first return home was signalised by the wreck of hope, so was his second by the blighting of affection. He seemed like the hero of the "Pilgrim's Progress," to be writhing in the grasp of Giant Despair; and from the day of his arrival, till his departure in the following April, he was not once seen in the streets of Recanati. ”

“ Thine eyes were closed when tardy praise was rife.
To thee thy final hour gave balm. He prays
For death, who knows our ills, and not for glorious bays.
Return, return to us; arise from thy
Cold grave disconsolate,
If yet thou lovest grief, O much deplored
Example of deep woe. Worse is our fate
Than that which did unto thy heart afford
Such cause for long lament. O thou endeared!
Who would thy doom bemoan,
If, save themselves, for nothing else men care?
Who would not scorn on thy great sorrow cast,
If all that greatness and ambition reared
Be held as Folly's own? ”

“ Thus it will be seen, that none of these poets were, in every respect, admirable, nor did they, with the exception of Alfieri and Parini, strike out new paths.
How necessary was an original and soaring spirit to infuse life into the poetry of Italy! At last the poet arose whose gifts were exactly adapted to the arduous task. That Leopardi fulfilled his mission with brilliant success, is proved by the ever increasing influence of his genius. During his life-time he was known only to the master-spirits of his age, but since his death, his works have become the property of the nation at large. ”

“ An imagination of marvellous vividness and richness was fostered by the exquisite scenery of his birthplace, and allowed to prey upon itself in the undisturbed retirement of the parental abode. He informs us that in his childhood he enjoyed the most delicious visions of coming happiness. But in time the dreams were dispelled, and truth alone remained. We all have our illusions, from which we must sooner or later awake, but few of us take their loss so deeply to heart as Leopardi. And this consideration makes us aware of the fact that all his thoughts and feelings were of preternatural depth. ”

“ Montefredini observes very justly: "It is the first wail of his tortured soul, the first malediction against the cruelty of Nature. The sentiment is powerful, and rushes forth furiously. So young, he is utterly miserable, and his opinions of life and the world are already full of despair. Even the calm aspect of nature wounds him as though it were an insult to his sorrow, a cruel mocking of the tempest of the soul.... The physical and mental life of Leopardi assumed too soon a fatal bent. ”

“ His greatness is acknowledged daily more and more, and volumes are written on his life and writings, illustrating and examining them from every point of view, and the more his poems are studied, the more are their beauties revealed.
As Carlyle said of Dante: "He is great, not because he is world-wide, but because he is world-deep." This depth, so unfathomable, and yet so remote from obscurity, is the first and greatest of his intellectual qualities. Closely allied to it is his amazing originality of thought and style. ”

“ From when I saw thee first,
What other care did ever prompt my heart
Than love of thee? How much of day doth part
Without a thought of thine? In sleep immerst,
When lay my weary soul
By dreams unhaunted of thy sovran form?
As beautiful as dreams
Thy angel vision seems.
On earth below or in the distant spheres:
What hope to me appears
Of finding aught more lovely than thine eyes,
[Pg 141] Or sweeter joyaunce than thy thought supplies?
LOVE AND DEATH.
"He dies in youth who to the gods is dear." ”

“ That charm has been felt by the greatest minds of the century, and by many who have no sympathy with his philosophy. Alfred de Musset, who had certainly little in common with the man or the poet, wrote enthusiastic verses on the "sombre amant de la mort," and declared that in the small volume of his poems more was to be found than in works of epic length.
I am inclined to think that the secret of his power lies in the unique and exquisite contrast between the bitterness and gloom of his thoughts and the sweetness and radiant beauty of his style. ”

“ If Aristotle be right in his opinion that all great geniuses are inclined to melancholy, Leopardi ought surely to be considered the greatest genius that ever lived. His gloomy view of life is expressed in every line he wrote. It draws a dark veil across the gorgeous verses to Angelo Mai; it fills the cadences of the "Ricordanze" with mysterious melody; and it appears in august repose in the meditations of the "Ginestra." Not content with giving it utterance in verse, he is sedulous to support it by reason and disquisition in prose. ”

“ But if we condemn all poems that take their starting point from a slight occurrence, we must begin by denying merit to Pindar, for what can be more intrinsically trivial than the foundation on which [Pg 18] he builds his lofty fabrics? It is further a mystery to me how Montefredini can understand the eighth stanza to allude to Tasso, when it is obvious that it applies to no one but Ariosto, and is a most exquisite description of the effect produced by that poet on the mind, offering, perhaps, the finest passage in a poem replete with beauties. ”

“ When other poets give utterance to their misery and despair, they impart a sable colouring to their diction. Not so Leopardi. He can exclaim:
"So che natura é sorda,
Che miserar non sa."
But the verses are steeped in loveliness and melody. Such is the first and most powerful cause of the great [Pg 28] effect he produces. Next we must place, though higher in absolute merit, his quality of depth. With the exception of Shakespeare and Dante, there is, I think, no poet of modern times who equals him in depth of thought. Every subject he treats he pierces to the core. ”

“ But Leopardi, in a similar position, wrote his incomparable "Aspasia," not even revealing the real name of her to whom he alludes. The most striking instance, however, of their dissimilarity, is the difference in their philosophy. Pope's self-complacency allowed him to indulge in optimism, with which, however, many of his finest passages are at variance. His intellect had sudden flashes of intense truth, but he was not a systematic or profound thinker, and when he wanted a system of philosophy as theme to his brilliant verse, he took that most in vogue in his time. ”

“ Other poets may delight us with airier and more brilliant flights of fancy, but Leopardi leads us to the brink of abysses, and shews us their unfathomable depth. Fully to enjoy this power we must read his finest passages slowly, and let each verse saturate the mind. Hence the impression, after reading his "Canti," that we have perused, not a small collection of short poems, but a work of mighty design like "King Lear," or "Prometheus." ”

“ This languor is perceptible even in the sublime "Ginestra," and it is not absent in passages of the "Pensiero Dominante," "Amore e Morte," and the long mock-heroic "Paralipomeni." The repose, sepulchral as it may have seemed to him, of Recanati, and the exquisite beauty of its scenery, were conducive to the exercise of the imagination. Nor must we forget that he spoke of other places—except Pisa and Bologna—with equal bitterness. The climate seems really to have worked havoc on his delicate frame. ”

“ Though not equal to its four immediate predecessors, I think this poem worthy of high admiration for the delicacy and rapidity of its transitions. It is wonderful to observe with what ease the poet rises from simplicity to sublimity, and returns again to simplicity. What perfection of art and what discrimination of style! ”

“ He says himself that he had an ideal of unattainable perfection in his mind, which deterred him from writing works of great extent, whether in prose or verse. But that ideal I think he really has attained in some of his finest poems. The merit of his works, not only in degree, but in kind, is so immeasurably superior to that of his contemporaries, that we cannot find a standard for judging it without going back to the greatest masters of the art of poetry. I have no hesitation in placing him immediately after Dante and Ariosto for strength of poetical genius. ”

“ Di mirar queste valli?"
"The picture of life in the second stanza," says Montefredini, "is as gloomily sublime as anything ever written of a similar nature. It seems laden with the sighs of oppressed humanity. And what repose amidst the universal darkness! What a style!—like the voice of an immortal. All is solemn, immense, eternal. This poem will ever be the poem of all nations—the noblest and grandest expression of human sorrow." Great praise is also due to the skill with which the poet preserves the character he has assumed. ”

“ In Naples and its vicinity the remainder of his life was to be passed. The natural beauties of the surrounding country were delightful to one so appreciative of their charm. His health improved after a time, and he was able to display the riches of his intellect by writing the "Paralipomeni," many detached thoughts in prose like the "Pensées" of Pascal and the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld; and, above all, his philosophic and immortal poem, the "Ginestra," of which it may be said that, had he written nothing else, his fame would be perpetuated by this production alone. ”

“ He complains of the little liberty that was allowed him; of the dreadful monotony of life at I Recanati, of the little opportunity he had of exercising his N talents to his future advantage; and of the sufferings inflicted upon him by his "strange imagination" in the absence of all pleasure and recreation.
This last complaint was certainly well-founded. If ever man required distraction and amusement, it was Leopardi. With his self-harassing mind, his melancholy, his delicacy of health, solitude was to him the worst of evils. ”

“ It is also remarkable as the first poem in his later manner—that of the "Canto Notturno" and the "Ginestra." It is an idyl such as Theocritus, or, rather, Wordsworth, might have written. The gloom is past, the despair at rest, a gentle pensiveness alone remains. The picture of the setting sun:
"Che tra lontani monti,
Dopo il giorno sereno,
Cadendo si dilegua, e par che dica
Che la beata gioventù vien meno,"
always seemed to me the most perfect instance of subjective colouring of nature in the whole range of poetry. ”

“ At the age of twenty he published the "Ode to Italy" and the "Poem on the Monument of Dante;" and, two years later, one of his masterpieces, the "Ode to Angelo Mai." It is sad to relate that Mai in later years, instead of being grateful to the poet for addressing him in sublime verse, depreciated his learning, and coolly appropriated the emendations to an ancient Greek author, which had been communicated to him by the too-confiding Leopardi. Indeed, our poet showed himself in Greek more than a match for that celebrated scholar. ”

“ If we analyze a stanza or paragraph of his poems, we find a train of thought that recurs with curious regularity. It generally opens with the most richly coloured and delightful scenes; but when the reader is fully impressed with their loveliness, the clouds gather, and the poet concludes with the utterance of despair. The ode to Angelo Mai offers the earliest instances of this in almost every stanza. It is also strikingly exemplified in the opening paragraph of the "Vita Solitaria." Sometimes a whole poem evolves in [Pg 13] this manner, like the "Primavera," and the verses to Silvia. ”

“ Widely different was the development of Leopardi. He is the embodiment in song of the spirit of pessimism, if that disagreeable word is to be the cosmopolitan representative of what the Germans call "Weltschmerz." His view of life is not the result of a sourness that would make everything appear bad and unsatisfactory, but of an overweening compassion for the sufferings of his fellow creatures. ”

“ The simile of the Pilgrim is strikingly beautiful, and more so in a poet singularly sparing of such ornaments.
XXVII. "Amore e Morte" equals its predecessor in originality, and surpasses it in tenderness. The Greek simplicity and purity of style conceal the morbid and diseased sources of its inspiration. The apostrophe to death is the most fervent prayer ever uttered in song.
[Pg 26]
XXVIII. "A Se Stesso" is the only poem of Leopardi that is from beginning to end utterly gloomy, bitter and despairing. All his other poems have at least glimpses of beauty and serenity, but here there are none. ”

“ If we examine the works of Monti merely for the style, we shall find much to admire; but in truth, nature, depth, and emotion, he was utterly deficient. [Pg 15] The only contemporary poets who at all approached Leopardi in intellect, were Foscolo and Manzoni; but Foscolo, besides the disadvantage of living in exile, frittered away his great powers on learned trifles; and Manzoni soon deserted poetry for the more popular field of romance. ”

“ He sought a remedy for his sorrows by returning to Bologna, but in vain; and, on the twentieth of June, 1827, he removed to Florence, where he enjoyed the society of Giordani; but an acute inflammation of the eyes confined him to the house, and long prevented him from inspecting the treasures of art that overflow the Tuscan city. At this epoch he published his "Operette Morali," a series of dialogues and essays, offering, according to the best critics of his country, the most perfect specimen of prose in the Italian language. ”

“ The subject of this poem was a young girl of Recanati, whom the poet and his brother Carlo used frequently to see in their young days. It is a beautiful specimen of his almost supernatural powers of concentration and depth. From bewailing her untimely end, the poet rises to contemplate the vanity of earthly things. "Before such masterpieces," Montefredini justly observes, "as 'Silvia' and the 'Passero Solitario,' we are struck dumb with admiration." It is an instance of how powerful an effect a great writer can produce by slight means. ”