Giacomo Leopardi
1798-1837
Leopardi’s Philosophical Poetics
 Leopardi’s thought evolves from the gradual awareness of his own
unhappiness, whose origin can be found in the poet’s environment and
historical background
 The lack of a caring family, a conservative formal education, the
solitude and isolation of his upbringing, the illnesses derived from the
“mad and desperate dedication to his studies,” the derision of the
citizens of Recanati, the mediocrity of the city’s cultural environment,
had a great impact on Giacomo’s sensitivity and intelligence
 The historical background was characterized by the crisis of the
Enlightenment, the birth of new ideologies, the crisis of the
intellectual (loss of political and civic role), the political and cultural
backwardness of the papal state
 Leopardi came to maturity during the Restoration, which saw the
conflict between nationalism, liberalism and romanticism on one side
 And cosmopolitism, absolutism and classicism on the other
 On the literary scene those years saw the polemic article written
by Madame de Stäel on Romanticism and Classicism
 The point of departure of Leopardi’s speculations, ultimately
aiming at illuminating the meaning of life, is the existential
malaise of the poet, his physical and psychological unhappiness.
 Such sentiment is at the origin of an existential pessimism whose
characteristics are
a) a precocious recognition of one’s youthful illusions and dreams
b) a growing distrust for life
c) a (not yet rationalized) feeling of disappointment and desolation
d) a distaste for all sorts of social constraints
e) a sense of uselessness and suffocation
Historical Pessimism (1816-20)
 Leopardi’s thought advances from an analysis of the condition of
“unhappiness,” whose causes, dynamics and consequences are
investigated
 At the foundation of this condition he places the theory of SelfLove, according to which man is a creature that, by necessity, is
drawn to self preservation and self love. Anything one does, even
good actions towards others, are driven not by selflessness, but by
the opposite desire to please primarily the self (deriving pleasure
from good deeds)
 Self love is at the origin of good deeds, even of noble deeds, while
egoism is caused by a degeneration of self-love, produced by the
development of civilization, which is dominated by reason.
Egoism is one of the consequences of the negative historical
progress which brought man, according to Leopardi, from Nature
to Reason (involution, barbarism)
 Leopardi rejects the optimism of the new ideologies and the
reassuring utopias of his time. He revolts against the
closemindedness and the conventions of his class. He celebrates a
mythical world of noble virtues and incorruptible values, a world
in which glory and fame are the only antidotes against the
grayness of life. He attacks vehemently the century’s myths,
history and progress, and the simplemindedness of a century that
celebrates MAN as the creator of reality.
 He criticizes the fanatic anthropocentrism of the time and affirms
that history is not progress but involution from the primitive state
of nature, happy and good, to a civilized condition, corrupt and
decadent
 In the history of humankind he recognizes four ages
a) the primitive (state of perfect harmony and innocence)
b) classical antiquity (synthesis of nature and reason)
c) the M. A. (common places of the Enlightenment - dark ages)
d) the modern (reason, coldness, rationalism, inauthentic life)
 Leopardi rejects any civil and technological progress, convinced of
its negativity. To him civilization means distancing man from nature.
The world becomes more and more corrupt.
 Cause of all ills is Reason, enemy of Nature, mother of society and
of all its egoism. Reason has destroyed the ancient heroic age
 Leopardi’s dream is to recapture the ancient flame, the vivacity of
the imagination, the strength of illusions, the energy of yesterday
against the tedium of today. This can only succeed through the
recapturing of “memories”
 Like Foscolo, Leopardi understands the need for illusions (glory,
self love, love for the country, honor, virtue, love); they are in
synchrony with Nature and constitute the only antidote against
progress and civilization. Poetry for Leopardi must foster illusions
 The history of humankind is about the battle between happiness and
truth, illusion and reality, hopes that humanity must keep alive in
order not to surrender to despair. Illusions hide from men the
tragedy of life (Il sabato del villaggio)
 The Real is also illusory (Schopenhauer). Reality is the enemy of
happiness
 Leopardi, son of the age of Reason, revolts against it,
proclaiming the superiority of what is thought, dreamt and hoped
for (against what is real)
 Happiness (against the most coveted tenet of the Enlightenment)
is given not by the knowledge of reality but by its ignorance. To
know more means to suffer more. Who augments knowledge (is
written in the Bible) augments suffering.
 In sum, Leopardi’s historical pessimism can be expressed in the
following antinomies, the first with positive, the second with
negative value
a) Nature
b) Reason
a) Ancient
b) Modern
a) Natural state
b) Society
a) Illusion
b) Real
Cosmic Pessimism (1823-1830)
 During the years of his “poetic silence” (1823-7), Leopardi
completely changes his initial conception, rehabilitating Reason
against Nature. As he continues to analyze the causes of human
unhappiness, he observes that the natural impulse is contrasted,
on the individual level, by a twofold limitation, biological and
ontological. On the historical level he sees egoism as a third
limitation (“the plague of society”)
a) humanity’s intrinsic weakness. Discovery of one’s fragility
b) impossibility of happiness. Nature endows man with a drive to
happiness, but this is unattainable (since it is infinite and totally
fulfilling). Its search leads to a finite and concrete unhappiness.
The momentary pleasures are but a relative short truce in the
unending unhappiness
 Leopardi’s Teoria del piacere: Man is driven to find pleasure, but
pleasure exists only in desire (since it is a purely speculative
concept).
 Desire is imagination, hope, dream, and as such it is always
projected in the future and always destined to remain unfulfilled.
 Pleasure exists as pleasures, seen, negatively, as cessation of the
unhappiness, brief moments of absence of pain: concrete but
ephemeral, they make suffering tolerable, giving us back, although
momentarily, the élan vital.
 Theory of Self Love and Theory of Pleasure are connected: man is
always, unsuccessfully, seeking happiness. He seeks pleasure, but it
is finite, driving man to look for a higher, more powerful one, that
he never finds. The tragedy of humankind is in this unending search
for the infinite, which unerringly results in defeat
 Pleasure is always hoped for, never possessed, always future, never
present: always fleeting. Never being possessed it becomes a hope, a
desire or an expectation. The deriving concept of pleasure is
therefore negative, that of suffering is positive:
a) pleasure is the absence of pain
b) suffering is not the absence of pleasure (La quiete dopo la . . . )
 This is the concept of negative pleasure: if suffering ceases
(pleasure being its counterpart), pleasure does not take its place, but
noia does (ennui-angst-despair). Life (as in Schopenhauer)
oscillates between suffering and ennui.
 The historical limitation: the irreconcilable difference between
individual and society; their interests are diametrically opposed.
Humanity, always seeking its own pleasure, behaves antisocially
(and this in full accordance with Nature). As a consequence,
Leopardi admits that all societies (including the ancient) are bad,
and that humanity is inevitably marching toward its destruction. No
hope or confidence is given to scientific and technological progress,
to economic expansion, to industrial and colonial exploitation.
 All three limitations considered, Leopardi concludes that all is evil.
To exist equals eternal disillusion, suffering, alienation. Responsible
for all this is Nature, source of humanity’s sorrows (La sera del dì di
festa, Dialogo della Natura e di un Islandese, Cantico del gallo
silvestre, Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia)
In sum:
 Man is born to suffer; joy is but a momentary cessation of pain
 From man’s perspective (existential level), the entire universe
seems to conspire against humanity. From the absolute point of
view (metaphysical level), life is a natural process that alternates
the living through birth and death
 Nature, seen as a malevolent and brute force, is responsible for
our tragic destiny
 Man knows his destiny, and that renders him unhappy. This
awareness leads him back to himself, to the primary source of his
unhappiness, his own life. Death is the only refuge to the living
Heroic Pessimism (1830-7)
 After Leopardi leaves Recanati (April 30, 1830) there is an
ideological turn (anticipated in the Dialogue of Plotinus and
Porphiry, 1827); from a materialistically negative vision of reality
to a positive agonistic message. Reasons for the change:
a) The friendship with the Tuscan liberals
b) The failed love relation with Fanny Targioni Tozzetti
c)
The conflicts with the Neapolitan spiritualists
d)
The practice of philology in the search for answers to the existential
drama
e) The
discovery of satirical language as expressive instrument f) The
reading of Epittetus (Greek stoic) and Theophrastos (disciple of
Aristotle and founder of materialistic empiricism)
g) The distancing from stoicism and atarassia (from indifference to
participation
h) The need for a constructive ethics and for a heroic attitude, based
exclusively on the human being (not on a transcendental power)
 In the Diaolgue of Plotinus and Porphiry we find the first
expression of Leopardi’s new phase: a call for solidarity in front of
the human destiny
 Later on in the Zibaldone he defends his philosophy against the
accusation of misanthropy (not man is culpable of our ills, but
Nature)
 In a letter to Giordani (1828), Leopardi criticizes the political and
cultural trends of his time, which professed their complete
confidence in the “magnifiche sorti e progressive.” He initiates a
battle against historicist optimism, and against political and
legislative commitment, that he sees animated by the ridiculous
pretense to create a betterment for society and at the same time
ignoring the real necessities of the individuals.
 In the last years Leopardi abandons the most “metaphysical”
pessimism in favor of a more “relativistic” one, founded on the
recognition of two different levels of truth:
 a) the level f the “order of things” (objective reality)
b) the level of existence (quality of life, history, culture)
 There is thus a double origin of suffering, that caused by a)
inevitable because external, produced by life itself: illnesses,
catastrophes, physical decay etc.) b) can be contrasted because it is
not determined by Nature but by the human being. Hence
Leopardi’s discovery of a heroic resistance and of social
commitment
 Historical ills are caused by the free reign of egoism: we all live to
die, and even if we are commonly living in the same misery, we
fight to prevail, to succeed at one another’s expenses. This egoism,
the manifestation of the lowest human drives, accrues human
suffering, makes our lives less tolerable.
 Man is a rational being. Subject to his culture, he can learn to
suppress his lowest instincts, and produce alternative values:
compassion, solidarity, friendship.
The Ethics of Solidarity
 Task of Philosophy (“filosofia dolorosa ma vera”) is to educate
humanity first to openly recognize the ills of life and then to
mitigate them through participation in the culture of the time
 The role of the poet is to serve truth and humanity, as he
promotes real culture and authentic social progress: attention to
the individual and to his complexity rather than attention to a
social class or an economic group
 It is the message encoded in “La ginestra” (the Broom):
Leopardi calls for a great alliance of all human beings, a “social
chain” (social catena) that unites all against the brute force of
Nature. Leopardi refuses the idea of Divine Providence and all
the silly ideas of his proud and simple century
 The final message is an irreducible rationalism. The conquest of
a “giusto sapere” (just knowledge) shall be the foundation of a
new society, a society built exclusively with human strength