LEOPARDI.
It is not often that a writer towers so immeasurably above his
contemporaries, that we can point him out, without fear of
contradiction, as the greatest of his century. We can, however,
unhesitatingly do so in the case of Leopardi. The works to which he
owes his immortality are, indeed, few in number and short in extent,
but their perfection gives them a dignity which more voluminous
productions might emulate in vain.
GIACOMO LEOPARDI was born at Recanati, a town of the March of Ancona,
on the 29th of June, 1798, the eldest son of Count Monaldo Leopardi
and Adelaide, his wife, daughter of the Marquis Antici. He had three
brothers, Carlo, Luigi, and Pierfrancesco, and one sister, Paolina.
His father was a man of literary tastes and had a magnificent library,
in which the future poet quenched his thirst for knowledge with as
much ardour as did Magliabecchi, in a former age, in the library of
Cardinal Medici. He soon outstripped in learning the priests who were
entrusted with his education. His eager and independent mind spurned
direction and disdained moderation. He acquired many languages, and
he soon endeavoured to put on paper the result of his studies. Some
of his injudicious admirers tried to make an infant prodigy of him,
and the stimulus of vanity was added to his passion for knowledge. He
toiled day after day in his intellectual quarry, with no relaxation
except the absolute necessities of food and sleep. The result may be
imagined. His sight failed him from the merciless strain put upon it
by reading till late hours of night, often by a flickering candle
burnt down to its socket. His spine became curved from constantly
bending over the huge folios that formed the staple of his reading.
His lungs craved in vain for dilation in his cramped chest and for the
freshness of the open air. His nerves gave way, his food failed to
nourish him, and his strength at last collapsed so completely that he
could neither read nor write, nor even think or speak. From the age of
sixteen to twenty-one the mischief was done. The duty of his parents
was plain. They should from the beginning have sternly forbidden the
overwork, and have compelled him to take requisite exercise and
rational amusement. Unhappily, they seem rather to have encouraged the
overwork, and actually to have discountenanced all amusement and all
intercourse with the outer world. They cannot be acquitted of grave
errors of judgment, but it would be harsh to charge them with cruelty.
Monaldo was devotedly attached to his children, but it would have been
better if he had sent them to school and college, where they would have
knocked about with companions of their own age, instead of being left
to solitary brooding with their minds preying upon themselves. They
would then have returned home, fresh and buoyant, and happy to be again
with their parents.
Monaldo had been extravagant in his youth, his estates were
considerably encumbered; motives of economy probably made him rejoice
that his children were actually learning more at home than could be
expected from pupils of the most famous seminaries. In later life,
whilst willing and happy to keep them in a handsome style in his
ancestral home at Recanati, he found it impossible to supply them with
sufficient funds to live in Rome or Florence or Naples in the style to
which they had always been accustomed. Therefore, he strongly opposed
their desire to see the world. He was perfectly contented with his own
surroundings, and he neither understood nor sympathised with Giacomo's
longing to widen his sphere of experience.
Painful misunderstandings were the result. Giacomo, owing to the
utter prostration into which he had fallen, was obliged to remain a
whole year without reading or writing, and he was thrown back upon
his melancholy thoughts. He had already received sufficient praise to
fire his youthful ambition and he chafed at the bondage in which he
was kept. Pietro Giordani was the first literary man of eminence whose
acquaintance he made, and long letters passed between the friends,
letters full of admiration on the part of Giordani, full of impatience
and despair on the part of Leopardi. That he exaggerated the horrors
of his condition cannot for a moment be doubted. Many youths would
have been thankful to take his place in a handsome and dignified home;
but then few youths could possibly have been tormented by such bitter
melancholy and such overweening ambition.
At last a desperate resolve occurred to him. Permission to leave home
was denied him; he would act on his own responsibility and take refuge
in flight. He made preparations for secret departure, and wrote a long
letter to his father explaining the motives of his desperate measure.
Happily, the insane project was abandoned, but the letter was preserved
by his brother Carlo, and it is deeply to be regretted that it was
published some years ago. Far better would it have been to draw a veil
across the eccentricities of a great mind and the misunderstandings
between natures noble and upright, but painfully divergent in thought
and action. However, the letter exists and must be dealt with. There is
nothing discreditable in it either to the poet or to his father, but
much that is inexpressibly painful.
The letter was written in the month of July, 1819. He begins by saying
with perfect sincerity that he always loved his father, that he always
would love him, and that he deeply grieved at being the cause of giving
him pain. "You know me," he continues, "and you know what my conduct
has been up to now. You will see that in all Italy, and I may say in
all Europe, no other person of my rank and even younger than I am, and
perhaps with intellectual gifts inferior to mine, could be found who
would show one-half of the circumspection, abstinence from all the
pleasures of youth, obedience and submission to his parents that I have
shown. However poor your opinion may be of the few talents that Heaven
has bestowed upon me, you cannot altogether refuse to credit the many
estimable and famous men who have passed the judgement upon me which
you know and which it is not for me to repeat. It was the marvel of
everybody who knew me that I should still be buried in this town, and
that you alone should be of an opposite opinion, and should inflexibly
persist therein. It is certainly not unknown to you, that there is not
a youth of barely seventeen years of age who is not taken in hand by
his parents to be placed in a position for his future advantage. I say
nothing about the liberty accorded to all young people of that age in
our position in life--liberty of which not one-third was accorded to
me at the age of twenty-one. It was only recently that I began to ask
you to provide for my future in the manner indicated by the opinion of
all who knew me. I noticed several families of this town, probably less
well off than we are, making heavy sacrifices in order to start their
sons in life, however faint the indications of promising talent might
be.
"Many people were of opinion that my intellect showed much more than
a faint indication; but you were of opinion that I was quite unworthy
of a father's solicitude or of any sacrifice on his part, nor did you
think that my present or future welfare was of sufficient importance
for you to make any alteration in your domestic arrangements.
"I saw my parents make light of the posts which they obtained for
others from the Sovereign Pontiff, and hoping that they would take
the same trouble for me, I asked that at least some means of living
might be obtained that would enable me to live in a manner suitable to
my position without being a drag upon my family. I was answered with
derision, and you did not think that your influence should be used
to obtain a decent competence for your son. I was well aware of the
projects you were forming for us, and how, to secure the prosperity of
what you call our '_house_' and _'family,'_ you exacted from Carlo and
from me the sacrifice of our inclinations, of our youth, and of our
whole life. Being quite certain that neither Carlo nor I would ever
humour you in that, I could not possibly entertain the idea of those
projects. You know only too well the most wretched life I have led
through the effects of my horrible melancholy, and the torments I have
endured from my strange imagination. You cannot have been blind to the
fact that there was no other remedy for my suffering health since I
fell into this wretched debility, but powerful distractions, and, in
short, everything that could not be had in Recanati.
"In spite of all this, you suffered a man of my character, either to
consume the remnant of his strength in suicidal studies, or to bury
himself in the most terrible ennui with its attendant melancholy. These
evils were aggravated by the surrounding solitude, and by the empty
and unoccupied tenour of my life, especially in the last months.
"It did not take me long to find that no arguments could move you, and
that the extraordinary firmness of your character, disguised under
a mild exterior, was such that I could not entertain even a shadow
of hope. All these circumstances and my reflections on human nature
persuaded me that I should rely upon nobody but myself, although I was
destitute of everything. And now that by law I am my own master, I will
no longer delay to take upon myself the load of my destiny. I know that
human felicity consists in contentment, and that I could more easily be
happy begging for bread like a mendicant, than surrounded in this abode
by all the material luxuries it may present. I hate that vile prudence
that freezes and binds us and makes us incapable of every great action,
reducing us to the level of the animals who apply themselves placidly
to the preservation of this unhappy life without any other thought.
I know that I shall be held to be insane, as all great men have been
held before me. And even as the career of almost every great genius has
begun with despair, I am not dismayed at mine beginning so too. I would
rather be unhappy than obscure; I would rather suffer than languish
in miserable ennui which to me is the fruitful mother of deadly
melancholy and black thoughts of wretchedness, more agonising than all
discomforts of the body. Parents, as a rule, judge their children more
favourably than others, but you, on the contrary, judge your children
more harshly, and therefore you never would believe that we were born
for anything great; perhaps no greatness appeals to you that cannot be
measured with geometrical precision.
"Having, to the best of my ability, given you my reasons for the step
I am about to take, it only remains for me to ask your pardon for the
distress it may cause you. If my health were less uncertain, I would
rather beg from house to house that touch a pin that belonged to you.
But feeble as I am, and hopeless of getting anything from you, I
have been obliged, in order not to die on the road, to take what is
absolutely necessary for my existence. I am deeply grieved, and it
almost makes me waver in my resolution when I think of the sorrow I
shall cause you, knowing your kindness of heart and all your endeavours
to make us contented with our lot. For those endeavours I am grateful
from the bottom of my heart, and it is agony to me to think that I
shall appear infected with the vice of ingratitude which I abhor more
than anything else. Only the difference in our principles which was in
no way to be overcome, and which would necessarily end either in my
dying here of desperation, or in my taking to flight as I am doing,
has been the cause of all my unhappiness. It has pleased Heaven for
our punishment that the only young men in this town who had thoughts
above the ordinary level of Recanati, should be born to you to try
your patience and that the only father who looked upon such sons as a
misfortune, should be allotted to us. That which consoles me is the
thought that this is the last annoyance I give you, and that it will
free you from my unwelcome presence. My dear father, if you will allow
me to call you by that name, I kneel down before you, and pray you to
pardon one so unhappy by nature and by circumstances. I would that my
unhappiness were my exclusive property and that nobody might share it
with me, and so I trust it will be in the future. If fortune ever makes
me the possessor of anything my first thought shall be to replace what
I have now taken from you. The last favour that I ask of you is that
if ever you recall to your memory your wretched son who has always
venerated and loved you, you will not curse him; and that if you cannot
praise him, you will, at least, bestow upon him that compassion which
is granted even to malefactors."
Such, abridged in a few passages, is the memorable letter which
reveals the troubles of Leopardi's mind. It is a curious medley of
wounded vanity, of imaginary wrongs and of genuine grievances. It is
passing strange that Leopardi should have been so anxious about his
future. He was his father's eldest son, and as such, heir to ample, if
somewhat encumbered, estates. I think he mistook his own feelings, and
what he thought solicitude for his livelihood, was in reality the agony
of unsatisfied ambition. The fatal mistake that his father made was to
coop up so ardent and aspiring a young man in the restricted routine
of a somewhat cloistral home. Monaldo and Adelaide had a genuine fear
of their children becoming contaminated by undesirable associates; and
to avert this evil, neither the poet nor his brothers were allowed
to go out unaccompanied. The young prisoners naturally resented this
surveillance, especially Leopardi who, at a time when his literary
renown was spreading all over Italy, was still under the restrictions
of the nursery. "Everybody treats me as a child," he writes, "except
my parents who treat me as a baby." No wonder that flight had its
romance and its attractions; but where would he have gone to if he had
run away? Doubtless, the utter inability to answer this question made
him abandon the idea. Carlo and Paolina noticed something peculiar in
his demeanour; they watched him, and we may safely assume that their
affection extorted from him his secret, that he showed them the letter
intended for his father and that they persuaded him to abandon the
wild and desperate scheme. It would have been well if the letter had
been burnt, and the whole unhappy episode consigned to oblivion. It
makes the poet appear wild and visionary and the father a more obdurate
tyrant than he really was. He utterly failed to enter into the ideas of
his illustrious son, and posterity has censured him with a harshness he
was far from deserving.
Leopardi abandoned the idea of flight and resigned himself as best he
could to the melancholy life he was compelled to lead. His home was
dull, but it was not, it could not have been, the Hell upon earth that
Montefredini, one of his biographers, would have us believe. There was
no domestic discord; not a trace of strife is discernible. The style
of living in Monaldo's house was handsome and even luxurious, but
neither his father nor his mother seem to have encouraged visitors or
to have entertained as might be expected from their rank. Of Leopardi's
acquaintance with Pietro Giordani they were undoubtedly apprehensive.
Giordani, although a Priest, had the reputation of being a freethinker
at heart, and they trembled lest he should infect the poet with his
opinions. It is even suspected that many letters between the friends
were intercepted. But others not only reached their destination, but
have been preserved and published, and they now form a noble memorial
of confidence and friendship. Leopardi was able at intervals to devote
himself to his favourite pursuit of literature and he published some
of his earlier poems; but their patriotic character frightened the
apprehensive Monaldo. He was afraid his son would be regarded as a
sympathiser with the Carbonari, and Leopardi had to distribute the
copies surreptitiously and to speak of them as little as possible.
He was abandoning his labours in the field of Classical Antiquity and
turning his attention to original and stirring themes, full of life and
actuality. But, unhappily, the more his intellect expanded, the more
his health deteriorated. The blackest melancholy never left him, and it
became daily intensified by his persistent habits of introspection. He
complains in a letter to Giordani of utter weakness of his whole body
and especially of the nerves. We hear nothing of doctors being called
in to arrest the evil, nor does the patient himself seem to have asked
for them. Things were allowed to drift until it was too late. "I am
lying," he says in one of his letters to Giordani, "under a mountain of
sorrows, and not a ray of hope can be seen." "I speak from my heart
and I do not pretend," he exclaims. The great poet is already a great
pessimist.
In 1821 the tone of his letters became a trifle more cheerful and he
was interested in the engagement of his sister Paolina, and he wrote
a poem on her marriage. But the negotiations were broken off and the
wedding never took place.
Conscious of the immense reputation he already possessed of vast
erudition, his parents formed the hope that he would embrace the
ecclesiastical career and rise to high dignities in the Roman Curia.
When at last their consent was obtained for his departure from home
in the hope that change would benefit his shattered nerves, it was to
Rome that he was sent, doubtless with the desire that he should make
acquaintances useful to him in the future. He resided with his maternal
uncle, the Marquis Carlo Antici. But no sooner had he arrived in Rome
than he regretted Recanati, and it became apparent that wherever he
went, one of his most striking oddities was an intense horror of his
place of residence, an utter loathing which he neither moderated
nor concealed. If he called Recanati a dungeon, he called Rome a
gigantic sepulchre. His shattered nerves could ill bear the concourse
of people around him, and he saw in society, not its vivacity and
animation, but its frivolity and emptiness. For the literary men of
Rome he entertained immeasurable contempt. He despised them for their
devotion to Antiquarian minutiæ. But this reproach came with ill-grace
from Leopardi, who had himself devoted years of laborious study, who
had even squandered the precious possession of health in laborious
elucidation of grammatical and philological problems, hardly more
important than the coins and inscriptions of Roman Antiquarians.
He made, however, some agreeable acquaintances, pre-eminent among whom
was the historian Niebuhr, at that time Prussian Ambassador to the
Vatican. Niebuhr conceived the most intense admiration for his genius
and spoke of him in the highest terms to Cardinal Consalvi, Secretary
of State to Pius VII. The Cardinal offered him the prospect of
valuable preferment, but only on condition that he should embrace the
ecclesiastical career. To this, however, Leopardi offered invincible
repugnance. Neither his own interests nor the persuasion of friends
could induce him to yield. Pius VII died in 1823, and Consalvi retired
from the direction of public affairs. So favourable an opportunity
never returned. Niebuhr offered Leopardi an appointment in Prussia,
but he refused, dreading the long journey and the severe climate of
Berlin. Great as his reputation was, no other opening offered itself.
It is curious to reflect on the vicissitudes of literary fame. Leopardi
is now valued for his lyric poems and for his dialogues and thoughts
in prose; but his laborious studies in philology, studies to which he
sacrificed health and happiness, are rapidly sinking into oblivion.
When he first went to Rome, he had hardly written a line of that
which has conferred immortality upon him. All the esteem he enjoyed
was lavished upon him for the fruits of his juvenile industry. The
grammarian who could solve the most difficult passages in the ancient
writers of Greece and Rome, who was as well versed in the Talmud as in
the Bible, who knew the obscurest Italian writers of the Fourteenth
Century as intimately as his contempories knew Petrarch, was valued
and extolled; the melodious poet and the profound philosopher was not
ignored or despised, because he was not even suspected to exist.
In 1823, after five months sojourn in Rome, he returned to Recanati.
He had seen the world he so longed to explore, and disenchantment
was the result. His health was not improved, on the contrary, it was
rather injured, by the inevitable exertions of travel, sight-seeing and
society. He remained at Recanati for two years, and during part of this
period he was occupied in publishing a volume of poems. They were well
received, but they were published secretly, without the knowledge of
his parents. The passion for overwork did not desert him even after the
warning already given to him by his shattered health. "I work day and
night as much as my strength will allow. When I break down, I walk up
and down my room daily for months." He would have done better to walk
up and down in the open air.
Having seen so much in Rome of the incompetence and frivolity of
literary people, he despaired of finding due appreciation for the
elaborate finish which it was his ambition to bestow upon his
productions and without which he did not care to write. But still his
ambitious spirit commanded him to persevere, and among the signs of
encouragement he received was the homage paid him by Niebuhr of the
dedication of one of his works. When Niebuhr left Rome he enjoined upon
his successor Bunsen to value the great merit of Leopardi, and Bunsen
proved himself the poet's friend through life.
In 1825 he received an offer from the Milanese publisher Stella to
superintend an edition of the complete works of Cicero and to reside
with him while the sheets were passing through the press. He gladly
accepted. He set out for Milan in July, staying at Bologna for a month
to avoid the fatigue of travelling during the great heat. Bologna was
one of the few places that he really liked. He enjoyed the company of
Giordani and other friends, and he was loth to part with them. When he
reached Milan, he pined to return to Bologna; everything seemed to him
repulsive and even hostile; he made no friends; his duties with regard
to the edition of Cicero seemed to him intolerably irksome; and he even
disliked the gaieties of Milan, gaieties in which he was at times too
unwell and at other times too melancholy to join.
"He carried with him his misfortune wherever he went," says Ambrosoli,
who met him at this epoch; "and he could not remain happy for long in
any place. He could not obtain any suitable post in Italy, and out
of Italy he would not accept one. When in 1825 he came to Milan to
stay some months with the publisher Stella, he was already an object
of compassion, so young, and with such a reputation for genius and
learning, and yet visibly hastening to his end. In his conversation,
as well as in his writings, he was so simple, so remote from any
ostentation, that few might suspect that he was an extraordinary
man; but by degrees the flashes of his wit and the treasures of his
knowledge revealed the powers within him."
At last he carried out his intention of returning to Bologna, but
the second visit was not so pleasant as the first. When the winter
came, it was bitterly cold, and his health suffered in proportion.
He would willingly have returned to Milan, but he did not receive
another invitation. He was occupied with a Commentary on Petrarch, a
labour which he did not undertake very readily, but which was pressed
upon him by Stella. It was a great success, and Stella had reason to
congratulate himself upon his acumen in getting the work done by so
gifted a writer. He entrusted Leopardi with the editing of a selection
from the best works of the best authors, and this task was still
occupying him when he returned to Recanati, in November, 1826.
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
to that of his departure, in the following April, he was not once seen
in the streets of Recanati.
He sought a remedy for his sorrows by returning to Bologna, but in
vain; and on the 20th 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.
In the autumn he somewhat recovered, and wishing to continue the
improvement, he avoided the cold of Florence by wintering at Pisa.
Florence, as a residence, he did not like, but with Pisa he was
enchanted. The improvement, however, was but slight, and his nerves
were in such a weak state that any sort of application or study was out
of the question. In April, 1828, he was able to apply himself again
to composition, and he seemed to be reviving, when the death of his
brother Luigi afflicted him profoundly. From June to November he was
again at Florence, but his yearning for home made itself felt after the
recent bereavement.
He started on the 12th of November for Recanati in the company of a
young man afterwards known to fame as Vincenzo Gioberti. He found his
birthplace darkened by the shadow of death, which seemed to him the
herald of his own. His former gloom returned, but in a more terrible
shape; he saw only annihilation before him; and he took the last
glance of life in his superb _Ricordanze,_ the most richly coloured,
the most deeply pathetic, the most unfathomably profound of all his
poems.
In 1830, his Florentine friends, wishing to have him once more in
their midst, urged his return to their city. Accordingly, in May he
took leave of his family, little thinking he should never see them
again. It would be curious to enquire what made him so wretched when
at home, and yet, when absent, always longing to be there. His brother
Carlo said many years later to Prospero Viani, the editor of his
correspondence, that none of his poems written elsewhere had the beauty
of those composed at Recanati; and when Viani mentioned the _Ginestra,_
Carlo replied that in substance even the _Ginestra_ was conceived
at Recanati. Some biographers say the _Risorgimento_ was written at
Pisa; but Ranieri, who was probably well-informed, says it was written
at Recanati, and this assertion is, I think, borne out by internal
evidence. The _Canto Notturno_ seems also to have been written in his
birthplace. Thus, Carlo's statement would be correct. It is observable
that the poems subsequent to the _Canto Notturno,_ with the exception
of _Aspasia_ and the little poem _To Himself,_ have an air of languor,
foreign to his earlier productions. This languor is perceptible even
in the sublime _Ginestra,_ and it is not absent from 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, bordered in the
distance by the blue waters of the Adriatic, 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. He allowed its
inhabitants only one merit, that of speaking Italian with purity and
elegance.
His stay in Florence, which extended from May, 1830, to October of
the following year, was made memorable by the publication of another
edition of his Poems, with many pieces added and with a dedicatory
epistle to his Tuscan friends. At this period, he made the acquaintance
of Ranieri, a Neapolitan with literary talents, who was to be his
intimate friend and future biographer.
In October, 1831, he suddenly vanished from Florence and appeared
in Rome, why, none could tell. He wrote to his brother Carlo on the
subject, begging him not to ask for the details of a long romance,
full of pain and anguish. It has been conjectured that he fixed his
affections upon an unworthy object and was bitterly undeceived.
Whatever the circumstances may have been, it is certain that in Rome
his mental misery, always great, rose to an intolerable height, and
that for a time he harboured thoughts of self-destruction. But the
strength of his character overcame the strength of his affliction, and
he gradually softened to a serener mood. At this time the Florentine
Accademia della Crusca elected him a member, a worthy tribute to his
genius and eloquence. After five months sojourn in Rome, he returned to
Florence, where he fell so dangerously ill that the rumour was spread
of his decease. The doctors urged him to try a milder climate, and in
September, 1833, he set out for Naples, accompanied by Ranieri.
In Naples and its vicinity the remainder of his life was destined 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 that
production alone.
In March, 1836, he who had formerly sighed so deeply for death and
who had invoked it in such exquisite verse, felt so greatly improved
in health that he imagined he had many years before him. But this was
only the last flickering of the flame before it went out for ever. The
Cholera was raging in 1837, and the prospect of falling a victim to
a mysterious and terrible disease, filled him with horror. The great
German poet Platen who had resided in Naples previous to his departure
for Sicily, where he died, was the first to instil him with alarm on
the subject.
Leopardi was thoroughly unhappy, and his strange aversion to the places
where he lived revived with unreasonable violence. He wrote of Naples
as a den of barbarous African savagery. He yearned for home and pined
for his family, and the last letter he sent to his father (three weeks
before his decease), was full of plans for returning to Recanati as
soon as his infirmities and the Quarantine would allow. He had not been
able to write his letters for some years, owing to failing sight, and
was obliged to dictate them to an amanuensis.
"If I escape from the Cholera," he says in this letter which was to
be his last, "and as soon as my health allows, I will do my utmost to
rejoin you, whatever time of year it may be; because I must hasten,
persuaded as I am that the term prescribed by God to my days, cannot
now be distant. My physical sufferings, incessant and incurable, have
in course of time attained such a degree that they cannot get worse,
and I hope that when at last the feeble resistance of my dying body
is exhausted, they may conduct me to that eternal rest which I pray
for daily, not from heroism, but from the intensity of the agonies I
suffer."
His earthly sorrows were indeed drawing to a close, and he died
suddenly at Capo di Monte, when preparing to go out for a drive, at
five o'clock in the afternoon on the fourteenth of June, 1837, aged
thirty-nine years all but a fortnight. "His body," says Ranieri, "saved
as by a miracle from the common and confused burial place enforced by
the Cholera regulations, was interred in the suburban Church of San
Vitale on the road of Pozzuoli, where a plain slab indicates his memory
to the visitor." He was slight and short of stature, somewhat bent and
very pale, with a large forehead and blue eyes, an aquiline nose and
refined features, a soft voice and a most attractive smile. His father
survived him ten years; his mother, twenty years; his sister Paolina,
thirty-two years; and his brother Carlo, nearly forty-one years. His
youngest brother, Pierfrancesco, who died in 1851, also at the age of
thirty-eight, was alone destined to continue the family. Carlo was
twice married, but had only one daughter, who died young, by his first
wife. I am indebted to the kindness of the Count and Countess Leopardi
for several interesting works relating to the poet.
Mr. Charles Edwardes has translated with great skill Leopardi's Prose
Works; I have translated his Poems, so that readers who may not be
acquainted with Italian, can now obtain an idea of his philosophy and
of his poetry. Equally as a thinker and as a poet, he is distinguished
by depth. As a Prose writer, he bears a striking resemblance to Pascal.
In both there is the same gloomy power of imagination, the same method
of profound meditation, and the same intensity of pessimism. As a poet
he displays the most marvellous variety of thought and of expression.
His mock-heroic poem, entitled _Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia,_
is, as the name indicates, a sort of continuation of the Greek Poem
describing the War of the Frogs and the Rats. The subject is wretchedly
chosen and it is obvious that the narrative serves only to introduce
the digressions, and it is in these digressions that the poet's
brilliant imagination and felicity of style are displayed. Indeed,
in the style alone can the work be said to have any merit. It is the
longest of his poetical productions, and it is greatly to be regretted
that he did not bestow the labour wasted on so frivolous a subject
upon a theme worthier of his genius. Still, there are some fine
passages, as, for instance, a most poetical description of Night, of
which I subjoin a translation:
"The star of Venus in the Heavens high
Appeared before the other stars or moon;
Silent was all; no breath was heard, no cry,
Unless the murmur of a far lagoon,
And buzzing gnats who from the forest fly
When veiling shades replace the glare of noon;
The lovely face of Hesperus serene
Was in the lake in pure reflection seen.
The poem also offers an exquisite description of the Cuckoo, which may
be compared to Wordsworth's poem on the same subject:
In fragrant May, when love and life are bound
In closer links, we hear the Cuckoo far,
Mysterious bird, who in the woods profound
Gives vent to sighs that almost human are,
Who, like a ghost nocturnal, all around
Deludes the shepherd following from afar;
Nor long is heard the voice: it wanes and dies,
Though born in Spring, when Summer heats arise."
But Leopardi's universal renown is founded upon the forty-one poems and
fragments of poems published under the collective title of _Canti._
Thirty-four of the pieces are complete and original poems, seven are
either fragments or translations.
We find in reading Petrarch's Odes and Sonnets a certain sameness,
whence it is difficult to keep the greater number of the poems distinct
from each other in the memory, beautiful though they may be. The same
cannot be said of Leopardi's _Canti._ There each poem has a distinct
individuality of its own, and makes an indelible impression upon the
reader. I will quote a few of the finest, and will begin with one of
his most admired masterpieces in which, under the disguise of Sappho
before taking the fatal leap from the promontory of Leucadia, he
deplores his own physical afflictions.
THE LAST SONG OF SAPPHO.
(_Ultimo Canto di Saffo_).
Thou peaceful night, thou chaste and silver ray
Of the declining Moon; and thou, arising
Amid the quiet forest on the rocks,
Herald of day; O cherished and endeared,
Whilst Fate and Doom were to my knowledge closed,
Objects of sight! No lovely land or sky
Doth longer gladden my despairing mood.
By unaccustomed joy we are revived
When o'er the liquid spaces of the Heavens
And o'er the fields alarmed doth wildly whirl
The tempest of the winds, and when the car,
The ponderous car of Jove, above our heads
Thundering, divides the heavy air obscure.
O'er mountain peaks and o'er abysses deep
We love to float amid the swiftest clouds;
We love the terror of the herds dispersed,
The streams that flood the plain,
And the victorious, thunderous fury of the main.
Fair is thy sight, O sky divine, and fair
Art thou, O dewy Earth! Alas! of all
This beauty infinite, no slightest part
To wretched Sappho did the Gods or Fate
Inexorable give. Unto thy reign
Superb, O Nature, an unwelcome guest
And a disprized adorer doth my heart
And do mine eyes implore thy lovely forms;
But all in vain. The sunny land around
Smiles not for me, nor from ethereal gates
The blush of early dawn; not me the songs
Of brilliant-feathered birds, not me the trees
Salute with murmuring leaves; and where in shade
Of drooping willows doth a liquid stream
Display its pure and crystal course, from my
Advancing foot the soft and flowing waves
Withdrawing with affright,
Disdainfully it takes through flowery dell its flight.
What fault so great, what guiltiness so dire
Did blight me ere my birth, that adverse grew
To me the brow of fortune and the sky?
How did I sin, a child, when ignorant
Of wickedness is life, that from that time
Despoiled of youth and of its fairest flowers,
The cruel Fates wove with relentless wrath
The web of my existence? Reckless words
Rise on thy lips; the events that are to be,
A secret council guides. Secret is all,
Our agony excepted. We were born,
Neglected race, for tears; the reason lies
Amid the Gods on high. Oh cares and hopes
Of early years! To beauty did the Sire,
To glorious beauty an eternal reign
Give o'er this human kind; for warlike deed,
For learned lyre or song,
In unadornèd shape, no charms to fame belong.
Ah! let us die. The unworthy garb divested,
The naked soul will take to Dis its flight
And expiate the cruel fault of blind
Dispensers of our lot. And thou for whom
Long love in vain, long faith and fruitless rage
Of unappeased desire assailed my heart,
Live happily, if happily on earth
A mortal yet hath lived. Not me did Jove
Sprinkle with the delightful liquor from
The niggard urn, since of my childhood died
The dreams and fond delusions. The glad days
Of our existence are the first to fly;
And then disease and age approach, and last,
The shade of frigid Death. Behold! of all
The palms I hoped for and the errors sweet,
Hades remains; and the transcendant mind
Sinks to the Stygian shore
Where sable Night doth reign, and silence evermore.
THE INFINITE.
I always loved this solitary hill
And this green hedge that hides on every side
The last and dim horizon from our view.
But as I sit and gaze, a never-ending
Space far beyond it and unearthly silence
And deepest quiet in my thought I picture,
And as with terror is my heart o'ercast
With wondrous awe. And whilst I hear the wind
Amid the green leaves rustling, I compare
That silence infinite unto this sound,
And to my mind eternity occurs
And all the vanished ages, and the present
Whose sound doth meet mine ear. And so in this
Immensity my thought is drifted on,
And to be wrecked on such a sea is sweet.
To SYLVIA.
Sylvia, rememberest thou
Yet that sweet time of thine abode on earth,
When beauty graced thy brow
And fired thine eyes so radiant and so gay,
And thou, so joyous, yet of pensive mood,
Didst pass on youth's fair way?
The chambers calm and still,
The sunny paths around,
Did to thy song resound,
When thou, upon thy handiwork intent,
Wast seated, full of joy
At the fair future where thy hopes were bound.
It was the fragrant month of flowery May,
And thus went by thy day.
I, leaving oft behind
The labours and the vigils of my mind
That did my life consume
And of my being far the best entomb,
Bade from the casement of my father's house
Mine ears give heed unto thy silver song
And to thy rapid hand
That swept with skill the spinning thread along;
I watched the sky serene,
The radiant paths and flowers,
And here the sea, the mountain there, expand.
What thoughts divinely sweet,
What hopes, O Sylvia! and what souls were ours!
In what guise did we meet
Our destiny and life?
When I remember such aspiring flown,
Fierce pain invades my soul
Which nothing can console
And my misfortune I again bemoan.
O Nature, void of ruth!
Why not give some return
For those fair promises? Why full of fraud
Thy wretched offspring spurn?
Thou, ere the herbs by Winter were destroyed,
Led to the grave by an unknown disease,
Did'st perish, tender blossom. Thy life's flower
Was not by thee enjoyed;
Nor heard, thy heart to please,
The admiration of thy raven hair
Or of the enamoured glances of thine eyes;
Nor thy companions in the festive hour
Spoke of the raptures of impassioned love
Or of its burning sighs.
Ere long my hope as well
Was dead and gone. By cruel Fate's decree
Was youthfulness denied
Unto my years. Ah me!
How art thou past for aye,
Thou dear companion of my earlier day,
My hope so much bewailed!
Is this the world? Are these
The joys, the loves, the labours and the deeds
Whereof so often we together spoke?
Is this the doom to which mankind proceeds?
When dark reality before thee lay
Revealed, thou sankest, and thy dying hand
Pointed to death, a figure of cold gloom,
And to a distant tomb.
THE CALM AFTER THE TEMPEST.
The storm hath passed away; the birds rejoice;
I hear the feathered songsters tune their notes
As they again come forth. Behold! the sky
Serenely breaks through regions of the West
Beyond the mountain-ridge; the country round
Emerges from the shadows, and below,
Within the vale, the river clearly shines.
Each heart rejoices; everywhere the sound
Of life revives and the accustomed work;
The artizan to see the liquid sky,
With tools in hand and singing as he comes,
Before the door of his abode appears;
The maiden with her pitcher issues forth
To seize the waters of the recent rain,
And he who traffics in the flowers and herbs
Of Mother Earth, his daily cry renews
In roads and lanes as he again proceeds.
See how the Sun returns! See how he smiles
Upon the hills and houses! Busy hands
Are opening windows and withdrawing screens
From balconies and ample terraces;
And from the street where lively traffic runs
The tinkling bells in silver distance sound;
The wheels revolve as now the traveller
His lengthy journey on the road resumes.
Each heart rejoices. When is life so sweet,
So welcome, as it now appears to all?
When with like joy doth man to studies bend,
To work return, or to new actions rise?
When doth he less remember all his ills?
Ah, truly, Pleasure is the child of Woe;
Joy, idle Joy, the fruit of recent Fear
Which roused with terror of immediate death
The heart of him who most abhorred this life;
And thus the nations in a torment long,
Cold, silent, withered with expectant fear,
Shuddered and trembled, seeing from Heaven's gate
The angry Powers in serried order march,
The clouds, the winds, the shafts of living fire,
To our annihilation and despair.
Oh bounteous Nature! these thy present are,
These are the joys on mortals thou doth shower;
To escape from pain is happiness on earth.
Sorrows thou pourest with abundant hand;
Pain rises freely from a fertile seed;
The little pleasure that from endless woe
As by a miracle receives its birth,
Is held a mighty gain. Our human race
Dear to the eternal Rulers of the sky!
Ah! blest enough and fortunate indeed
Art thou if pain brief respite gives to thee
To breathe and live; favoured beyond compare
Art thou if cured of every grief by Death.
THE VILLAGERS' SATURDAY NIGHT.
From copse and glade the maiden takes her way
When in the west the setting sun reposes;
She gathered flowers; her slender fingers bear
A fragrant wealth of violets and roses,
And with their beauty she will deck her hair,
Her lovely bosom with their leaves entwine;
Such is her wont on every festive day.
The aged matron sits upon the steps
And with her neighbours turns the spinning wheel,
Facing the heavens where the rays decline;
And she recalls the years,
The happy years when on the festive day
It was her wont her beauty to array,
And when amidst her lovers and compeers
In youth's effulgent pride
Her rapid feet through mazy dance did glide.
The sky already darkens, and serene
The azure vault its loveliness reveals;
From hill and tower a lengthened shadow steals
In silvery whiteness of the crescent moon.
We hear the distant bell
Of festive morrow tell;
To weary hearts how generous a boon!
The happy children in the open space
In dancing numbers throng
With game and jest and song;
And to his quiet home and simple fare
The labourer doth repair
And whistles as he goes,
Glad of the morrow that shall bring repose.
Then, when no other light around is seen,
No other sound or stir,
We hear the hammer strike,
The grating saw of busy carpenter;
He is about and doing, so unlike
His quiet neighbours; his nocturnal lamp
With helpful light the darkened workshop fills,
And he makes haste his business to complete
Ere break of dawn the heavenly regions greet.
This of the seven is the happiest day,
With hope and joyaunce gay;
To-morrow grief and care
The unwelcome hours will in their progress bear;
To-morrow one and all
In thought their wonted labours will recall.
O merry youth! Thy time of life so gay
Is like a joyous and delightful day,
A day clear and serene
That doth the approaching festival precede
Of thy fair life. Rejoice! Divine indeed
Is this fair day, I ween.
I'll say no more; but when it comes to thee,
Thy festival, may it not evil be.
ASPASIA.
Again at times appeareth to my thought
Thy semblance, O Aspasia! either flashing
Across my path amid the haunts of men
In other forms; or 'mid deserted fields
When shines the sun or tranquil host of stars,
As by the sweetest harmony awoke,
Arising in my soul which seems once more
To yield unto that vision all superb,
How much adored, O Heaven! of yore how fully
The joyaunce and the halo of my life!
I never meet the perfume of the gardens
Or of the flowers that cities may display,
Without beholding thee as thou appearedst
Upon that day when in thy splendid rooms
Which gave the perfume of the sweetest flowers
Of recent Spring, arrayed in robes that bore
The violet's hue, first thine angelic form
Did meet my gaze as thou, reclining, layest
On strange, white furs, and deep, voluptuous charm
Seemed to be thine, whilst thou, a skilled enchantress
Of loving hearts, upon the rosy lips
Of thy fair children many a fervent kiss
Imprintedst, bending down to them thy neck
Of snowy beauty, and with lovely hand
Their guileless forms, unconscious of thy wile,
Clasping unto thy bosom, so desired,
Though hidden. To the vision of my soul
Another sky and more entrancing world
And radiance as from Heaven were revealed.
Thus in my heart, though not unarmed, thy power
infixed the arrow which I wounded bore
Until that day when the revolving earth
A second time her yearly course fulfilled.
A ray divine unto my thought appeared,
Lady, thy beauty. Similar effects
Beauty and music's harmony produce,
Revealing both the mysteries sublime
Of unknown Eden. Thence the loving soul,
Though injured in his love, adores the birth
Of his fond mind, the amorous idea
That doth include Olympus in its range,
And seems in face, in manner and in speech
Like unto her whom the enchanted lover
Fancies alone to cherish and admire.
Not her, but that sweet image, he doth clasp
Even in the raptures of a fond embrace.
At last his error and the objects changed
Perceiving, wrath invades him, and he oft
Wrongly accuses her he thought he loved.
The mind of woman to that lofty height
Rarely ascends, and what her charms inspire
She little thinks and seldom understands.
So frail a mind can harbour no such thought.
In vain doth man, deluded by the light
Of those enthralling eyes, indulge in hope;
In vain he asks for deep and hidden thoughts,
Transcending mortal ken, of her to whom
Hath Nature's law a lesser rank assigned,
For as her form less strength than man's received,
So too her mind less energy and depth.
Nor thou as yet what inspirations vast
Within my thought thy loveliness aroused,
Aspasia, could'st conceive. Thou little knowest
What love unmeasured and what woes intense,
What frenzy wild and feelings without name,
Thou didst within me move, nor shall the time
Appear when thou canst know it. Equally
The skilled performer ignorant remains
Of what with hand or voice he doth arouse
Within his hearers. That Aspasia now
Is dead, whom I so worshipped. She lies low
For evermore, once idol of my life;
Unless at times, a cherished shade, she rises,
Ere long to vanish. Thou art still alive,
Not merely lovely, but of such perfection
That, as I think, thou dost eclipse the rest.
But now the ardour, born of thee, is spent;
Because I loved not thee, but that fair goddess
Who had her dwelling in me, now her grave.
Her long I worshipped, and so was I pleased
By her celestial loveliness, that I,
Even from the first full conscious and aware
Of what thou art, so wily and so false,
Beholding in thine eyes the light of hers,
Fondly pursued thee while she lived in me;
Not dazzled or deluded, but induced
By the enjoyment of that sweet resemblance,
A long and bitter slavery to bear.
Now boast, for well thou may'st. Say that alone
Of all thy sex art thou to whom I bent
My haughty head, to whom I gladly gave
My heart in homage. Say that thou wert first
(And last, I truly hope), to see mine eyes'
Imploring gaze, and me before thee stand
Timid and fearful (as I write, I burn
With wrath and shame); me of myself deprived,
Each look of thine, each gesture and each word
Observing meekly; at thy haughty freaks
Pale and subdued; then radiant with delight
At any sign of favour, changing hue
At every glance of thine. The charm is gone;
And with it shattered, falls the heavy yoke,
Whence I rejoice. Though weariness be with me,
Yet after such delirium and long thraldom
Gladly my freedorh I again embrace
And my unshackled mind. For if a life
Void of affections and of errors sweet,
Be like a starless night in winter's depth,
Revenge sufficient and sufficient balm
It is to me that here upon the grass
Leisurely lying and unmoved, I gaze
On sky, earth, ocean, and serenely smile.
ON THE PORTRAIT OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
ENGRAVEN ON HER TOMB.
Such was on earth thy form,
But the unpitying storm
Of Death resolved thy beauty into dust.
Dumb witness of the flight of ages here,
This image of thy perished loveliness
Stands all unmoved, as though it held in trust
The guardianship of memory and pain,
Above the ashes that alone remain
Of those sweet charms that did thy being bless.
That tender gaze, thrilling as though with fear
The eyes it pierced, as now it seems to do;
Those lips, abundant with the wealth of pleasure;
That neck, encircled by desire's fond arms;
That hand, Love's richest treasure,
Which when it clasped, responsive pressure knew;
And that fair bosom whose celestial charms
Gave those who saw a wan and pallid hue
From the excess of their adoring passion:
Once were as lovely as these sculptures fashion;
But all that now is left on earth of thee
Is dust and ashes which we may not see;
Thy monument to ages that ensue
Conceals the mournful vision from our view.
Thus Fate doth touch and crumble into dust
Whatever must unto our minds appear
Image of Heaven most precious and most dear.
Oh mystery eternal of the world!
Now fount and treasure of stupendous thought,
Beauty appears in majesty sublime,
Even as a Queen in regal robes empearled,
And seems on earth a heavenly splendour brought
From fairer realms beyond the bounds of time;
She seems to give us hope
Of fates that can with mortal sorrow cope,
Of happier homes and planets more divine
Where golden splendours shine;
But on the morrow, feeble though the blow
Which struck her so that she declines and dies,
Dreadful to see and abject in our eyes
Becomes that peerless beauty which before
Seemed like the Seraphs who in Heaven adore
The radiant throne of the celestial Sire;
And all the wondrous dreams she did inspire
Their colours lose and wane
And in our yielding souls no longer reign.
Strange, infinite desires
And visionary fires
Doth wondrous music in our fancy wake,
And we then take through a delightful sea
A wondrous voyage far
Like some undaunted sailor of the deep;
But if a discord crush
Our spirit's rapturous rush,
The spell is broken and our souls are free
A lonely vigil unrelieved to keep:
So slight a break that solemn bliss can mar.
O Nature, say, if thou art wholly vile,
If dust and ashes symbolise thy being,
How canst thou be so lofty and far-seeing?
And if thou art so fair
That sacred dreams thy children can beguile
With art and wisdom, their appointed share,
Why by a cause so slight
Are all thy fond aspirings put to flight?
_Exquisite is the picture in_ "LA VITA SOLITARIA" _of silent
meditation._
At times I seat me in a lonely spot,
Upon a hill, or by a calm lake's bank,
Fringed and adorned with flowers taciturn.
There, when full mid-day heat informs the sky,
His peaceful image doth the sun depict,
And to the air moves neither leaf nor herb,
And neither ruffling wave nor cricket shrill,
Nor birds disporting in the boughs above,
Nor fluttering butterfly, nor voice nor step,
Afar or near, can sight or hearing find.
Those shores are held in deepest quietude:
Whence I the world and even myself forget,
Seated unmoved; and it appears to me
My body is released, no longer worn
With soul or feeling, and its old repose
Is blended with the silence all around.
_Very noble is the conclusion of the_ "EPISTLE TO COUNT CARLO PEPOLI":--
Thou lovest song and poets charm thy mind;
Thy task it is that rarest gift to find,
That beauty of the soul, amid mankind
So seldom seen, so fugitive and frail,
That we its absence rather than its loss bewail.
Thrice happy he who never lost the flame
Of rich imagination when he came
To the autumnal tinting of his years,
In whom the freshness of the heart appears
For ever pure and tender! Blessed he
Whom Nature still in holy liberty
Preserves and keeps that he may deck her brow
With all the treasures that his thoughts allow.
Such be the gift by Heaven on thee conferred!
May sacred Poesy by thee be heard
When snowy age hath marked thee as her own
And on thy head her silvery signs are shown.
I feel in me all blest illusions wane
That did my youth and dawn of life sustain;
I loved them much, and to the bitter end
I shall with tears their fond remembrance tend.
When comes the time that frozen quite and hard
My soul shall be, nor in the Heavens starred
The clustering splendours give my spirit joy,
My wondering thought in vague surmise employ;
Nor sunny hills and lonely places smile,
Nor warbling birds with early notes beguile
My weary heart; nor, sailing in the sky,
The queenly Moon be welcome to mine eye;
When Art and Nature shall to me be dumb,
And tender feelings like a stranger come:
Then other lore, though less endeared, I'll choose
That I the sense of bitter life may lose.
My weary mind the wonders shall embrace
That scholars seek and questioning sages trace,
The bitter truth and dark reality,
The goal of life that we so dimly see;
Why brought to light and why surcharged with woe
The countless generations here below;
What Fate and Nature have for us in store;
What laws ordain, what guides direct us o'er
The perilous gulfs of Nature and of Time;
These be the fountains of my thought sublime,
The lofty theme of many a pensive rhyme.
Thus I shall live; unhappy though it be,
There are some charms in sad reality.
But if my song unwelcome be or strange,
I shall not grieve; for in its boundless range
My spirit hath outsoared the love of Fame;
She is a goddess only in her name;
Than Fate and Love that rule our humankind
So vaguely, so unwisely, she is far more blind.
These extracts will enable the reader to form an idea of the power
of thought and depth of feeling that characterise Leopardi's Poems,
although the beauty of his diction may not be reproduced in all its
purity and sweetness. Never was there a poet who knew how to handle
the Italian language with greater skill, or to give it more enchanting
melody or more varied cadences. If he has a fault, it is that he is
sometimes too indifferent to ornament, and that his simplicity now
and then degenerates into poverty and bareness. But when we remember
what Italian poetry had become in his time, how artificial, how
overladen with meretricious ornaments, we shall think him worthy of
praise, rather than deserving of censure. His earlier poems are the
most ornate, and it was only by degrees that he attained that crystal
clearness of style for which we find no parallel in the Italian
language. His frequent use of a capricious succession of rhymed and
unrhymed lines allows him to develop his thoughts with perfect freedom;
indeed, so easy is the metre, that were it not for his happy selection
of words and exquisite variety of cadence, it would border dangerously
on the slipshod; indeed, it does so in the works of his imitators, and
of recent years it has been, probably for that reason, abandoned by
poets in favour of systems more rigid and perhaps more epigrammatic.
Leopardi had every characteristic of a great lyric poet. If his
pessimism is sometimes too pronounced for many readers, it must be
admitted that the evils of life are sufficiently numerous to justify
his elegies; and he atones for any excess of gloom by the most
exquisite pictures of nature and of love. The world appears more
beautiful, though more terribly and darkly beautiful, in his poems than
in reality. He has a rare power of musical diction which delights the
ear even in his most melancholy passages. Indeed, the secret of his
power lies in the unique and exquisite contrast between the gloom and
bitterness of his thoughts and the sweetness and radiant beauty of his
style.
He has also the rare power of concentrating in a few lines a whole
world of thought and emotion. Thus, in the _Risorgimento_:
"Meco ritorna a vivere
La piaggia, il bosco, il monte;
Parla al mio core il fonte,
Meco favella il mar.
In the poem _To Sylvia_ quoted above, he calls her "his hope so much
bewailed," "mia lacrimata speme." In the _Ricordanze_ he calls Nerina
"his eternal sigh." Numerous other instances could be adduced. Take,
for example, the lovely passage in the _Canto Notturno,_ where the
shepherd apostrophizes the Moon:
"Pur tu, solinga, eterna peregrina,
Che si pensosa sei, tu forse intendi,
Questo viver terreno,
Il patir nostro, il sospirar, che sia;
Che sia questo morir, questo supremo
Scolorar del sembiante,
E perir della terra, e venir meno
Ad ogni usata, amante compagnia."
His pathos and tenderness, expressed in language of the most perfect
purity and sweetness, and adorned with the rainbow hues of his vivid
imagination, produce an effect more poetical than words can describe.
I know of no lyric poet who keeps the mind of his reader under a more
potent spell. Others, like Horace and Alfred de Musset, may be more
entertaining, others, again, like Keats and Shelley, may delight us
with airier and more brilliant flights of fancy, but Leopardi leads us
to the brink of abysses and shows us their unfathomable depth.
He always writes from his heart, a rare quality, for we may find
twenty poets who write from the head for one who writes from the
heart. He never attempts a task for which he is unfitted. His powers
of reasoning in verse are very great, but his argument never becomes
unpoetical, never becomes dryly didactic. If his works have a fault,
it is that now and then the poems have a tendency to fall off towards
the end, and in his later works there is a certain languor of style,
probably the result of ill-health. He is a great master of blank verse,
and only in one of the poems in that metre, the _Palinodia,_ does he
become heavy and prolix. Sometimes, when he is not sustained by any
great thought, his extreme simplicity degenerates into poverty. Very
few poets could venture to be as simple as Leopardi.
His works have the effect of growing upon the reader. The second
perusal pleases better than the first, and the more they are read, the
more they are admired. In quantity of verse produced, he is surpassed
by many writers; but in quality, by none.
His prose works, like his poems, are few in number and short in
dimension. They comprise dialogues (a form of which he was very fond),
a few essays, and over one hundred detached fragmentary thoughts. They
make only a small volume of most unimposing bulk, but the beauties of
thought and style are so great that many critics have extolled them
as the most perfect production of Italian prose. They all set forth
his pessimism and his melancholy, but with so much art and variety,
that while they convince us of the world's misery, they also enchant
us with its beauty. Leopardi made a profound study of the great prose
writers of the Fourteenth Century, and he alone succeeds in reproducing
to perfection the freshness and harmony of their style. Some passages
are so magnificent that they cry out aloud to be put into verse. In his
prose we find less of his heart (that wonderful heart that embraced the
whole world in its sympathy) and more of the vivacity of his fancy than
in his verse.
His _Operette Morali,_ as his Prose Works were not very appropriately
entitled, did not receive that cordial welcome which their
extraordinary beauties should have commanded. In his youth he was
extolled up to the skies for his laborious erudition, but when he
offered the public works of real originality and value, both in prose
and verse, his gift was appreciated only by very gradual degrees. This
may be partly explained by the fact that a great wave of Utilitarianism
was passing over the country, a tendency against which he exclaims
in a letter written to Giordani from Florence in 1828. "I am weary,"
he says, "of the haughty contempt which people here profess for the
beautiful and for literature, especially as I do not think that the
summit of human wisdom consists in the knowledge of politics and of
statistics. On the contrary, when I consider philosophically the utter
uselessness of the endeavours to obtain perfection of governments and
happiness of nations, even from the days of Solon to our own, I cannot
help smiling at this mania for political and legislative schemes and
calculations, and I humbly ask how the happiness of nations can be
obtained without the happiness of individuals? We are condemned to
unhappiness by Nature, and not by our fellow-creatures or by Fate;
and to console us for this inevitable unhappiness, I think nothing
is better than the study of the beautiful, the cultivation of che
affections, the flights of imagination, and the pleasures of our
illusions. Therefore, I consider that all that pleases the mind is
useful beyond ordinary things of use, and that literature is more truly
useful than all those dry subjects which, even if they fulfilled their
objects, would little help the true felicity of human beings, who are
individuals, and not masses; but when do they really fulfil their
objects?. . . . . . I hold (and not accidentally) that human society
has inborn and necessary principles of imperfection, and that its
condition can be more or less bad, but never perfect. From every point
of view, to deprive men of that which is most delightful to the mind,
appears to me the infliction of a real injury upon the human race."
These words may be taken to heart at the present day as much as at the
time when they were written. There are far too many people ready to cry
down the pursuits of art and poetry, and it would be well to answer
them with these arguments of one of the most powerful and original
intellects that the human race has ever produced.