The Poetry of Giacomo Leopardi as a Guide for Poets of All Time

 

A Backward Look, from the Zibaldone to the Infinito, passing through Horace and the Operette Morali

Almost two hundred years after his death, what remains alive and relevant in Leopardi's poetry? In an age dominated by the hypertrophy of the ego, in which poetic writing often risks retreating into an intimate diary or a pure navel-gazing outburst, it is urgent to question the profound meaning of writing poetry. What is poetry if not the act of throwing our individual consciousness onto the entire cosmos?

From this perspective, the poetry of the great poet from Recanati is a window still open onto the universe, and as such, it retains its universality intact.

To restore poetry to its original stature, we must rediscover the category of "philosophical poetry": a form of poetry that does not renounce form, but transfigures it into a tool for existential, metaphysical, and cosmic inquiry. On this journey, two masters two millennia apart join hands: Quintus Horatius Flaccus and his brilliant reader and translator from Recanati, Giacomo Leopardi.

1. The Poet's Workshop: The Horatian Lesson of the Very Young Leopardi

In 1811, a not yet thirteen-year-old Leopardi, immersed in "seven years of mad and desperate study" in his father's library, embarked on a surprising undertaking: the translation of Horace's Ars Poetica into octaves. Horace is not only the poet of carpe diem; he is the theoretician of measure, of balance, of labor limae (the patient and rigorous filing of the text).

Horace's verses, revived by Leopardi, are a stern warning against facile writing. We have already seen how, for Leopardi, poetry is not an improvised outpouring, but a craft that demands artisanal discipline, labor as hard as that of a blacksmith.

But it is above all on the quality of the work that Horace and Leopardi are adamant:

"Mediocre is tolerated in some things; / not in poetry: just as in honey / a fastidious mouth does not like / an almond as bitter as gall. / How much better would it be to write in prose / for one who in verse is truly a cruel man..."

Poetry does not allow for half measures. While in other arts or professions, average quality can remain useful, in poetry mediocrity is equivalent to failure. A mediocre poem is like a bitter almond drowned in honey: it spoils the whole. Leopardi shares with Horace an almost tragic severity: those who lack the mettle or preparation to bear the weight of the prose verse form should leave the lyre to those who have the "shoulders" to support it.

And to prevent narcissistic illusion from deceiving the author, here is the famous advice of silence and critical scrutiny:

"But if ever, to gain honor and praise, / you sometimes wish to scribble / four verses, O Piso, / show them to your parent / or to a wise and good censor; / then let them be locked up for a long time / because if a man once escapes / he does not return even from the disappointed!"

Horace's "Decalogue" recommended letting the writing "rest" for nine years (nonumque prematur in annum). The written word, once published, can no longer be recalled. The authentic poet knows how to wait, knows how to let emotion settle so that only the crystalline essence of truth remains.

2. From Form to the Cosmos: The Genesis of the Operette Morali

What does this formal rigor have to do with the Operette Morali? It has a crucial role to play.

When Leopardi composed the Operette Morali between 1824 and 1825, he applied to philosophical prose the same ruthless discipline he had learned from Horace and the classics. The Operette Morali are, upon closer inspection, philosophical poetry in the form of ironic and dialogical prose. The brevity, essentiality, absence of frills, and lucidity of style are the direct result of that Horatian apprenticeship.

But there's more: in the Operette Morali, Leopardi makes the decisive leap that separates the simple versifier from the great philosopher-poet. He stops viewing his own personal misfortunes as a private matter and transforms individual suffering into a magnifying glass on the cosmic condition.

When, in the Dialogue between Nature and an Icelander, Nature responds with icy indifference to the pangs of man, or when, in the Dialogue between a Goblin and a Gnome, he shows how the Earth continues its imperturbable motion even after the disappearance of humanity, Leopardi is writing philosophical poetry. He is teaching poets of all times that the true subject of art is not our petty daily neurosis, but the tragic, sublime, and mysterious relationship between human consciousness and the immensity of the Universe.

3. A lesson for poets today and tomorrow

Meditating on these Horatian verses translated by the young Giacomo is an exercise in salutary humility for anyone today who picks up a pen or sits down at a keyboard with the ambition of writing poetry.

What do Horace and Leopardi teach us?

1. Respect for technique: Poetry is not mere instinct or an unreflective flow of consciousness. It is architecture, rhythm, measure, and precise word choice.

2. The courage of truth (the philosophical dimension): Poetry that endures is that which can question existence. It is not content to describe a fleeting feeling, but digs to the roots of pain, joy, hope, and emptiness.

3. Overcoming egocentrism: True "philosophical poetry" is not sterile encyclopedism, but the ability to connect the beat of one's heart with the beat of the cosmos. As in Ginestra, poetry becomes the place where man acknowledges his own fragility and, precisely for this reason, weaves a network of universal empathy.

Let us therefore meditate on these verses together, all of us who aspire to be poets or who love poetry. Let us remember the "ferraro," the value of silence before publication, and above all the responsibility to offer the reader not the superfluous, but a polished gem capable of illuminating, even if only for an instant, the darkness of infinity.

Just a story of islands

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07JKFNCDG

Chapter 3

 

The entry was dark, but after closing the front door behind our shoulders, we noticed, on the left, an open door, which filtered a weak light. After we had gone through a poorly illuminated and narrow corridor, we turned into a staircase. There was not any sign of life all around. At length we found, still on the left, an open door and we leaned out to see.

" Come in, come in" said a voice from behind a disclosed glasses’ door.

And before we could do or say anything, a thin face appeared on the threshold and in a firmer and louder tone repeated:

"Come in, at last!".

He soon showed us two chairs in front of his desk and started watching us with questioning expression.
I also observed him with attention and curiosity.
He was the thinnest person I had ever seen in my life. You could rather say that he was made but skin and bones. He had prominent cheekbones and also the jaws, the temples and the front were very protruding.

If some incredibly brisk and extraordinarily green eyes had not filled his eyes sockets, I might have also believed that he could really be made of skull and crossbones.
But skulls and crossbones, usually, do not speak. Furthermore he wore some suits which let him to look like a normal man.

 "I am Mr Winningoes. What can I do for you?" –he said as soon as we had sat down.

 " We are looking for a job" - George immediately said after a brief pause.

" What kind of job are you looking for?"  said the man on his way. Despite of the appearances, his voice sounded like a perfect job’s agency employee.

 "Everything will be all right" I dared, in my difficult English, staring at George to ask confirmation of the agreement we had hastily reached, not to speak at all of Mr Joking.

" Ah!"  the man exclaimed "Let’s see, then."

With the thin finger he started pointing up the lines of some sheets leaned on a skin braid on his front. He mumbled, rather than leaked, without any sense and, from time to time, he fixed a careful look to one or the other of us and after, shaking his head, he started over reading.

He had finally arrived to the last sheet, and rather seemed that the finger already slipped from the sheet to the braid, and from this to the green glass that covered the plan of the desk, when the old man pronounced with vivacity: - “Here you are! Two intelligent young people, good health, bachelors and prepared to travel around, we are looking for easy and pleasant job. Good conditions. No references are required."

to be continued...

Just a story of islands

 

 

 

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07JKFNCDG

Chapter 2

 

That Friday, the 9th of November 1979, right the day we were going to meet that strange Mr Winningoes, as we had soon to discover, I followed him on the wide tree-lined roads. On the sidewalks, the leaves, fallen during the night, had formed a thick and soft carpet, on which George seemed to walk with special pleasure.

It was a colorless day, one of those typical London winter days where the diurnal light maintains the same slim intensity, from mornings to evenings, and the night comes up suddenly unexpected, when the pale and smothered reverberation of the sun, behind a thick blanket of clouds, has concluded its almost invisible cycle.

It blew a fresh and light breeze. But the wind, from time to time, became impetuous, and by means of violent gusts seemed to push us, like for joking or as if it wanted to encourage us to go straight ahead. And courage was exactly what we really needed, as our search of a job was becoming a serious and weary problem.

“I don't recognize the London's gone times anymore” George had told me, not later than the former evening, coming out from one of the many jobs agencies we had uselessly visited.

I followed him on his march, absorbed in the noise that our own footsteps produced on the leaves. The rhombus of an auto dissuaded suddenly my attention.

”Where are we going to?” I asked him.

” We will try to go this way along” he answered turning slightly back his head. “This way through we will rejoin the Maida Vale. There are plenty of job’s agencies up there.”

George knew a lot better than I that area, as he was living since a longtime. He had taken that one-room flat where we were living together, with a girl, now got back to Italy, like he fleetingly told me, not without a shade darkening sadly his eyes and I did not dare to ask him more of it. We walked silently. Sometimes we crossed some hasty passing or perceived, almost more than hear it, as a fleeting apparition, a car or a motorbike whose noise was spaced out slowly, as absorbed and diluted in the immensity of the surrounding silence.

We walked around and after an indefinite time, that desert of dry leaves seemed to stop against an iron handrail.

I brusquely handed at it, gasping and excited for the march and for a strange emotion that had suddenly pervaded me. From my point of observation, tall brushes of trees hid the horizon and I could only see, slightly swaying in the void, a green poster with the write “Winpey “in red- block dark characters.

I felt a pleasant excitement throughout my body. A feeling that immediately was of lightness. A desire to let my body flow in the air, toward that poster, flying the sky.

-” Let’s go down these steps”.

The George’s voice dissuaded me from my thoughts. As we went down the stairway, the view, under of us, revealed its real contours. That poster, that seemed like suspended in the air, was the summit of the tall pylon of a crane that laid in the center of an immense housing estate.

I watched again toward that write and noticed that it was hacked against a loaded leady sky with no change of tonality. A dark and heavy vault until my eyes could see.

”Are we in the morning or in the evening, George?” I did seriously.

”What difference does it make?!” he answered almost in a mocking way “However there seem that some people are working over there. Let’s go and see.” He added turning to a serious tone back.

We reached the site fence. Through the interspaced tables that bounded we saw numerous working machines: diggers, shovels, concrete mixers, kneaders, all laying like dead animals, in the most total silence.

"Are you sure there are some people working here? I can't see anybody."

George gave a look through the tables too, a little bending on them.

"They might be stopping for one of the so many "tea-times" English people like to do. Let’s look for the entrance and then we will see."

To find the access of the yard, that occupied a wide place in the center of a crossroad, we walked along his perimeter. The entrance was exactly on the opposite side. We entered.

Between working machines and shovels, heaps of sand and piles of sacks of cement, bricks, lumbers, irons and utensils, we noticed a small cottage of red plate, that was almost in the centre of the building yard. We were approaching there when a small door was opened out of the shed.

"Hello boys!" A gentleman said sorting out " Can I help you?"

His voice was cordial and happy. It seemed he was talking to well known persons.

" Is there any need of some workers?" - George did him without preambles and also laughing. We stopped a little closer and so I had the opportunity to better observe him: he looked quite a lot peaky, making a net contrast with the strong black of the hair. He dressed with elegance a brown suit on a white shirt with a red and black cravat.

" I would not mind at all " the man replied in the former jovial tone -" but our firm assumes only through the agency. Now I will give you the address so you can go and see there. There are good hopes. Follow me in to the office, please" he spurred us, seeing we were so undecided.

Just a story of islands

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1687004994

That London summer 1979 had exceptionally been long and mild (London whether, at middle August, it is usually already cold). Such a whether allowed me to make profitably the ice cream sale. We sold them to the passer-bys, leaned out in the street with a freezing machine “Carpigiani” that, in the evening, after the sale, we located inside a shop of souvenirs along the Oxford Street. Working together had contributed to strengthen our knowledge and we became so good friends.

Of George I appreciated the self-confidence that showed in the practical and small things of everyday’s needs, as for instance knowing how to cook rather than to be skilful in the use of English language. This assurance of his, nevertheless, was oddly conjugated with his strenuous internal search that seemed finalized to understand the deepest sense of our life on the earth. That after all was the main reason which had pushed me in to London town.

These things I had realized through the great discourses that, alternate to long silences, we had along that time.

George was rather a reserved man, who didn't love very much to speak of himself, at least not in direct and explicit manner. Neither he seemed very interested to pick up the alien confidences.

He apparently gave the impression to have something to hide or have run away from someone he needed to forget, in a city where also a celebrity would pass unnoticed. But after a short time, I had realized that his silences, his reservation, his misanthropy were together the fruit of a shyness and the result of a reflexive and deep character, projected towards a spiritual search that, absorbing big part of his energies, detached him from the material things of daily life, except those strictly necessary for living through.

The search of an ideal world, through dimensions and experiences untied from the normalcy and the usualness of everyday life, had been soon the point of contact and more important welding in our relationship. Furthermore, apart all this, I had found on him a disinterested support, without which my London adventure would have soon ended up. Then the summer, suddenly ended, and slowly but surely, also vanished the savings put aside in the ice cream season.

to be continued...

 

The Essence of Life

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07JKFNCDG

Chapter 1

George and I

 

I had known George, just in the summer of  1979, in a little snack bar, in the beginning of my London stay. A snack-cafe not so far from Piccadilly Circus, where they made a slightly drinkable coffee. I used to go there, because it was the only place where the coffee was served in the small, classical, Italian cups, and even if it was served with no cream, it was still better than that watered black soap that almost all barmen sell off for coffee in England.

The snack-bar premises were in a large rectangular room. On the right of the entry there was the counter with the coffee-machine, while both on the left and  the opposite wall, in front of   the entry-door,  there was a wood bench, lined in brown colored plastics and, straight above, lined in the identical way, a narrow shelf, plenty of sugar-bowls and ashtrays.

The left wall, for the whole length of the bench, beginning from the shelf and finishing to the originally white-painted ceiling, was made of a thick transparent glass that, giving brightness to the place, allowed the visitors to enjoy a wide outside sight where, just in front, was well visible the entrance of a theatre with an ample and luxurious atrium. It was there that George seemed to stare up his look, over the round glasses (like John Lennon’s, I had thought).

His olive complexion, the chestnut hair and the black moustaches didn't make him certainly look like a probable Queen‘s subject, but I questioned him, this not less, in English. Also because, after all we were in London. What other idiom was I supposed to speak?

He burst into laughter, hearing  my question. Not immediately, but after turning his head to look at me, with a funny expression on his face, while with my hands I repeated my request for fire, rubbing, at the same time, my right forefinger on the palm of the left hand.

After lighting his own cigarette, as I stood close and steady, much more interdict than angry, because of his crazy laughing, he told me in a strongly stressed, though smooth, Italian language:

 “Sorry for laughing, but Italian people do make notice of them, when they speak English. You come from Rome, don’t you?” -, he suddenly added, smiling with satisfaction to my sad, affirmative answer.

The place, beside the two of us and a girl sitting on the other side of the bench, was empty. The barkeeper, behind the counter, was preparing a great copy of sandwiches, with cheese and tomatoes, lettuce and meats and a few others with all four ingredients together, according to the best English taste.

 “And you, where do you come from?” - I asked him in some annoyed tone for that reference to the Italian’s accent and particularly to that of the Romans, whose noble descendants I am still proud to belong.

-” I am not Italian” - he answered to me with peaceful voice “but I have lived quite a lot of years in Italy. So I know your customs quite well, and also your accent” -, concluded laughing again tastefully.

This time his laughing, however, didn't upset me at all. Those few words had been enough to make my anger fade away; or maybe I was just only glad to talk to someone without squeezing my brain to translate my thoughts from Italian into English language.

To recognize nationalities through the English speaking accents, was only one of the so many eccentric aspects of George’s personality, as I had the opportunity to discover thereafter.
But what struck me mostly among them, determining the consolidate of our friendship, was his passion, shared by me, for the esoteric philosophies. Actually ‘till then, I had reputed them exclusive knowledge of the eastern cultures, while George, rightly in the period we met, was studying at one (whose study he had to introduce me, later on), that he granted to the Huichols, a direct descending people of the ancient pre-Colombian populations that in the present state, according to what at that time he told me, were still living in the north western mountains of Mexico.

...to be continued...

A love triangle in London

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BTJZ26CL

Dramatis Personae

 

Max Sailor:  A young man looking for his own way

Brenda Parnell: Max’s  girlfriend

 George Tender: Good friend of Max’s and Brenda’s

Jonathan Close: A good  Jewish  boy from England

Elvira Giusti: Former Jon ’s girlfriend

Hamed Farsiwill : Iranian student refugee-Escaped from Iranian Revolution

Rocìo Peròn-Mendoza: Colombian student

Francesco Soggiu: Italian Theologian  Student

Inspector Green: Head of local police

Jim Cope: Inspector’s Green first man

Roy Elther: Inspector ‘s Green Second man

Vincent and Norman: pushers from Jamaica (do not appear)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 (The drama is set in London  at any week-end between 1979 and 1980 in the Hampstead Max ’s parents  house)

Scene I

(Max, Brenda, George in a large bedroom)

 

Max (lying on the bed, in a dreaming voice)

-Tonight I would like to fly!!

 

Brenda (getting closer to hold the smoking pipe Max is handing to her, in a very sensual voice through the smoke she will take from the pipe)

-Why waiting tonight, my dear?

 

Max (getting up and giving the pipe Brenda is handing to George)

-Not  in that sense, Brenda! George have you got me?

 

George

-Of course I have! You would like to be some kind of flying bird, wouldn’t you?

 

Brenda (after passing the pipe George is handing to Max, miming a bird with open arms)

-Oh, yes! Let’s be a crow! Or even better, as we say with the Irish word, let’s be a

Préachàn (draws a crow’s sound from  her tongue)

 

George (also laughing  )

-I would prefer to be a dog sail!

 

Max (putting down the pipe on a bedside table)

-Great! I would also like it! A dog sail following the wake of a ship! For ever!

 

(The phone bell breaks on afterwards)

 

Max (picking up the phone)

-Hello!?

(pause)

 

Max

-Sure! It’s right today!

 

(pause again)

 

Max

-Any time you like in the afternoon!!

 

(another pause)

 

Max

-I’ll see you later, then! By, by!!

 

Brenda

-Who was it?

 

 

Max

-He was Francesco, ‘you know? The italian guy who is following our philosophy term at College….

 

Brenda

-Ah, the Jesuit priest? What did he want?

 

George

-He’s not a priest yet!

 

Max

-I had formerly invited him to the party…and he just wanted a confirmation….

 

Brenda

-He’s not a priest yet then?! That’s why he ‘s joining the party!! He has told me anyway he is graduated in theological sciences or something like that…..

 

Max

-Actually is doing a sort of  sabbatical time before taking the final votes!

 

George

-That’s the way Jesuits are  unlisted…..…..

 

Max

-They are supposed to experience in all things  of the life before becoming a priest….

 

Brenda (laughing maliciously)

-Even going with  women?

 

George

-I think they are! The things of   life also include screwing, don’t they?

 

Max(taking again the pipe in his hands)

-And also smoking I might suppose……

 

Brenda

-I expect a priest would not copulate neither smoke…

 

Max

-‘ you catholic! You’re always living among prohibitions!!! Is not the same for the orthodox, is it George?

 

George

-I think is not at all! As far as I know they can even get married!!!

 

Brenda

-As matter of fact: they have to get marry before any carnal relation!!

 

Max

-But Francesco is still a laic man!!

Brenda

-And laity are not supposed to go with any woman before they get marry with them!!

 

George

-All this matter looks like a dog trying to catch  its own tail, doesn’t it?

 

Max

-Quiet a difficult matter to face on my birthday!!!

 

Brenda

-Oh, by the way, did you enjoy my birthday’s present?

 

Max (watching up the pipe’s bowl and searching somewhere around)

-Where is the rest of the grass?

 

Brenda (handing him a small silver wrapping paper )

-Here you are!

 

Max (filling up the   bowl and   passing to George the lighting pipe)

-Of course I did! What about you George?

 

George (tasting a long blow and passing the pipe to Brenda)

-That’s really a special stuff! I’m stoned as hell!

 

Brenda (taking a blow)

-Why do we say ‘ stoned as hell’? I actually feel stoned as heaven!!!

 

Max

-Do we have anymore to share with our guests?

 

Brenda

-Don’t worry about. We’ll have plenty of it!!  Vincent, my pusher, has promised to come along with a large pound of the same stuff, this afternoon, at five  o’clock; this was only a free sample (shows the empty tinfoil)

 

(A heavy sound hits the time)

 

 

George

-Goodness! It’s one o’clock!?!

 

Brenda (laughing and mocking a famous song)

-And time for lunch! Onky-tonky!

 

Max (laughing too)

            -And we still have to set the catering on the tables for the guests! They might be coming soon!

 

Brenda

-Let’s go upstairs then!

 

EXEUNT