Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism | Leopardi, Giacomo - Michael Caesar (essay date winter 1991)

Michael Caesar (essay date winter 1991)

SOURCE: Caesar, Michael. “Leopardi and the Knowledge of the Body.” Romance Studies 19 (winter 1991): 21-36.

[In the following essay, Caesar rejects earlier critical views that equated Leopardi's own physical limitations with his pessimism and agnosticism, focusing instead on the body as “disputed territory in Leopardi's work.”]

Natura umana, or come,
Se frale in tutto e vile,
Se polve ed ombra sei, tant'alto senti?
Se in parte anco gentile,
Come i più degni tuoi moti e pensieri
Son così di leggeri
Da sì basse cagioni e desti e spenti?

Englished by Ezra Pound with due pathos—O mortal nature, / If thou art / Frail and so vile in all, / How canst thou reach so high with thy poor sense; / Yet if thou art / Noble in any part / How is the noblest of thy speech and thought / So lightly wrought / Or to such base occasion lit and quenched?¹—these lines complete one of...

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