Giacomo Leopardi
(Recanati, Italy, 1798-Naples, id., 1837) Italian writer.Educated in the austere environment of a conservative, provincial aristocratic family, he had a precocious aptitude for letters.He studied in depth the Greek and Latin classics, the French moralists of the 17th century, and the philosophers of the Enlightenment.Despite his self-taught training, he quickly impressed the men of letters and philologists of his time with his erudition and impeccable translations from Greek, especially of Homer's Iliad and the Aeneid. of Virgilio.His fragile health suffered seriously because of his exclusive dedication to the study.
Giacomo Leopardi
Reading the classics awakened his passion for poetry and shaped his taste.In An Italian's Discourse on Romantic Poetry (Discorso di un Italiano intorno alla poesia romantica) he sided with the classics in the dispute raised by romanticism, arguing that classical poetry establishes a deep intimacy between the man and nature with a simplicity and a nobility of spirit unattainable for romantic poetry, a prisoner of modern vulgarity and intellectualism.The theme of the political and moral decline of Western civilization and, in particular, of Italy, is central in his first poems, which became part of the Cantos (Canti, 1831), a work that puts highlight the divorce of modern man and nature, considered the only possible source of love.
From 1817 he maintained an assiduous correspondence with Pietro Giordani, who was both his mentor and friend.Also in this period he began the writing of his essay Zibaldone , on which he worked for years, progressively specified what he would call his "philosophical system" and produced the literary material that would serve him for his major works.This work of introspection favored the development of his lyrical and intimate facet, which is expressed in verses of great musicality: between 1819 and 1821 he composed the Idilios (Idilli).Leopardi elaborated a modern poetic language which, assuming the impossibility of evoking ancient myths, describes the affections of the soul and the familiar landscape, transfigured into an ideal landscape.
From 1825 he lived in Milan, Bologna, Florence and Pisa and became close to the liberal political circles.During those years he became friends with Niccolò Tommaseo, Giovanni Battista Niccolini, Alessandro Manzoni and other contemporary writers.After the revolution of 1831 he was elected deputy of the Marches in the Bologna Constituent Assembly, but, after losing his confidence in the liberal movement, he resigned his seat; his criticism of the liberals was expressed in the work Paralipomeni de la Batracomiomaquia (Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia, 1834).Between 1833 and 1837 he lived in Naples, at the home of his friend Antonio Rainieri.
The Zibaldone of thoughts (Zibaldone dei pensieri), on which he worked from the summer of 1817 to 1832, were published posthumously in 1898; It is a set of personal notes in which he writes down his ideas about literature, language and almost any subject of politics, religion or philosophy, and in which he reflects his original reception of the debates of his time.As a poet, his melancholic and tragic style inevitably recalls the romantics, but his background of skepticism, his precise and luminous expression and the modesty with which he contains the outpouring of feelings bring him closer to the classics, just as he himself wished.
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