Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) is considered the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and one of the most important figures in world literature. He is known for his philosophical verses exploring human suffering, the indifference of nature, and the elusiveness of happiness. *Poems* (*Canti,* first published in 1835) is his poetical masterpiece.

Leopardi wrote at the start of the bloody movements that brought Italy independence, and his odes are rooted in both his and his nation's existential struggles. With bleak despair for the present and romantic hope for the past, he summons Italy's "glorious ancestors" to revive its lost patriotic hopes. But his particular political message is part of grander metaphysical concerns about life, love, and a cosmic sense of pessimism.

Leopardi rejected both the easy allure of Catholic faith and the unbridled optimism of Enlightenment science. His temperament and outlook on religion, morality, and life so contrasts with that of Manzoni that it was the subject of a popular motto during the Risorgimento: "To church with Manzoni; to war with Leopardi!" So widespread was this sentiment that "Leopardi's patriotic odes had to be confiscated by the Austrian censorship lest they should incite people to revolt."

In the estimate of Francis Henry Cliffe: "With the exception of Shakespeare and Dante, there is... no poet of modern times who equals him in depth of thought. Every subject he treats he pierces to the core.... Leopardi leads us to the brink of abysses, and shews us their unfathomable depth." And yet the "miraculous thing about his poetry," according to Italo Calvino, "is that he simply takes the weight out of language, to the point that it resembles moonlight."

Poems:

* [Kindle](https://www.amazon.com/Poems-Giacomo-Leopardi-ebook/dp/B004UJ2C76)
* [Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19315)
* [Google books](https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Poems_Canti_of_Leopardi/ge7vPzn8OXsC?hl=en&gbpv=0)
* [Librivox](https://librivox.org/the-poems-of-giacomo-leopardi-by-giacomo-leopardi/) 3h44m

Supplemental:

* [Giacomo Leopardi, Nature, and the Barbarism of Modernity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RbZjsHh_Ks) Hermitrix podcast

Extracts:

* "If Savonarola’s zeal devout / But with the fagot’s flame died out; / If Leopardi, stoned by Grief, / A young St. Stephen of the Doubt, / Might merit well the martyr’s leaf; / In these if passion held her claim, / Let Celio pass, of breed the same, / Nor ask from him—not found in them— The Attic calm, or Saxon phlegm." (*Clarel*, 1.14)
* "Do seraphim shed balm / At last on all of earnest mind, / Unworldly yearners, nor the palm / Awarded St. Teresa, ban / To Leopardi, Obermann?" (*Clarel*, 3.1)
* "Overmuch he shared, but in that kind / Which marks the Italian turn of thought, / When, counting Rome's tradition naught, / The mind is coy to own the rule / Of sect replacing, sect or school." (*Clarel*, 1.12)

This meetup is part of the series [The Risorgimento](https://www.meetup.com/wisdom-and-woe/events/304318119/).

Chad Beck

Betty

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