SOURCE: Bini, Daniela. “Introduction: A Synthesis for Leopardi.” In A Fragrance from the Desert: Poetry and Philosophy in Giacomo Leopardi, pp. 1-21. Saratoga, Calif.: ANMA Libri, 1983.

[In the following excerpt, Bini discusses Leopardi's writings as a synthesis between poetry and philosophy, maintaining that earlier critics have mistakenly considered the two aspects of his work incompatible.]

The imagination takes its flight only after the void, the inauthenticity of the existential project has been revealed; literature begins where the existential demystification ends.

(Paul de Man, Blindness & Insight)¹

Life itself … has no meaning. But so what? “What are the meanings in our lives?” is the only question.

(Robert Solomon, The Passions)²

Tout ce qui est beau et tout ce qui est grand, ne soit qu'une illusion. Mais si cette illusion était commune … n'en serait-on pas plus heureux? … En effet il n'appartient qu'à l'imagination de procurer à l'homme la seule espèce de bonheur positif dont il soit capable. C'est la véritable sagesse que de chercher ce bonheur dans l'idéal.

(Giacomo Leopardi, Lettere)³

The 1959 Taylorian lecture “Schiller: Poet or Philosopher?” by Elizabeth Wilkinson began with the recollection of a previous paper which Paul Valéry had given in the same series twenty years before. The revolutionary aspect of Valéry's lecture consisted in showing the public “that the stock opposition of Poetry and Abstract Thought is one of those seductively simple schematizations so beloved of the human mind and so conveniently crystallized by language.”⁴ To accomplish his purpose Valéry had revealed the complexity of his own inner life, showing how “an idea which starts off with all the appearance of developing into philosophical discourse may well become entirely metamorphosed en route and emerge as that species of linguistic specialization we call a poem.”⁵

Wilkinson used Valéry's lecture as a starting point for her discussion of the twofold personality of Schiller, poet and philosopher. Schiller himself, as will be seen in the third chapter, was well aware of it, and this awareness was the cause of a psychological trauma which lasted many years and made him reflect over and over on the subject. Wilkinson, however, noted, “what to Schiller seems a hybrid is for Valéry the norm: a man becomes now poet, now philosopher, by one of those successive specializations which are characteristic of human behaviour.”⁶ Valéry wanted to put an end to the “romantic heresy,” that is to “the notion that the poet and the thinker are two utterly opposed types of mind.”⁷ Since Leopardi, like Schiller, made of the relationship between philosophy and poetry the central issue of his life, they should, in this respect, be considered in advance of the Romantics.

The concern met in Wilkinson's essay on Schiller motivates Naddei's book L'eterno e il tempo in Giacomo Leopardi poeta e filosofo. The aim of the book is, in fact, to study Leopardi's personality and work as a whole. The author rejects the “Romantic heresy” attacked by Valéry, which had become much more deeply entrenched in Italy through the influence of Benedetto Croce. Croce, in fact, not only stated the incompatibility of poetry and philosophy, but went so far as to consider philosophical thought harmful to poetry, and thus to be dismissed altogether from the artistic activity. Croce's established antithesis between the artistic and the philosophical faculties made their collaboration in the human spirit impossible. “The poet and the thinker are,” for him undoubtedly, “two utterly opposed types of mind.” In his criticism of Leopardi he remained consistent with his principles and approved only that part of his poetical production which he called purely idyllic, that is, detached, in his view, from speculative thought.⁸ By so doing Croce not only reduced Leopardi's poetry to a minimum, but he also made it impossible to understand the poetry he wanted to save. None of Leopardi's poetry, in fact, is totally devoid of philosophical thought. Even the so-called idyllic phase is a moment which is posited only to be negated by rational thought. In the dialectical process of Leopardi's poetical creation the idyll represents the negative moment, and thus its value consists in its negation.

The merit of Naddei's book is, principally, to have recognized the legitimate role of Leopardi's philosophy in all his production and to have seen its value together with the unquestioned value of his poetry. In pursuing this task Naddei applied the aesthetic theory of Carmelo Ottaviano which requires that a concept be present in poetry. As she herself admitted, the theory was not new. Gentile had already stated that art should have a philosophical content, when he argued, against Croce, that art and philosophy are not things in themselves but “prospettive mentali che nascono con l'atto stesso del pensiero giudicante e si configurano con quella struttura che accompagna il giudizio concreto.”⁹ Following Gentile's example, Naddei writes that “lo stesso contenuto della mente … può rappresentarsi al poeta come al critico suo interprete, una volta come immagine, un'altra come discorso … come poesia … come filosofia.”¹⁰ In support of her thesis Naddei could have found in the Zibaldone, in the Pensieri and in the Operette morali the philosophical correlatives for all Leopardi's poems.

Naddei's book also offers an almost complete annotated bibliography of the critical works related to Leopardi's philosophy, which began at the end of the last century, immediately after the publication of the Zibaldone, with the massive work of Zumbini.¹¹ The philosophical line in Leopardian scholarship stopped with the Crocian reaction, which was continued by the literary movement “La Ronda.” Only since the late forties, thanks to the pioneer works of Sapegno, Binni, Luporini, and Timpanaro has the interest in Leopardi's philosophical thought been revived and pursued in a more critical fashion.

Naddei, finally, rejected the superficial argument which denied the presence of a philosophy in Leopardi on the basis that Leopardi lacked a system; as if philosophy could only exist in an orderly and systematized form. “L'asistematicità” of Leopardi, she writes, “è liberamente voluta e non rappresenta perciò un limite criticamente riscontrabile.”¹² To support her claim she quotes several passages from the Zibaldone and paraphrases a statement made by Luporini in his study on Leopardi. A philosopher is, in Luporini's view, he who has a critical consciousness; “chi vede la vita sotto un particolare punto di vista e ne ha coscienza ed è capace di condurre un ragionamento dimostrativo che conferisca validità al suo assunto.”¹³

Naddei, however, did not develop her intuition. She did not explain why “l'asistematicità [sia] liberamente voluta e non rappresent[i] perciò un limite.” Yet the reason is of great importance. Leopardi, in fact, freely chose to “lack a system,” since the use of a system would have implied a belief in the possibility of finding a logical order in reality. But reality is illogical and absurd, and escapes any attempt at systematization. Thus a philosophy of life must represent it as it is. Leopardi sees a world in which chaos reigns. He laughs at the human weakness which still attempts to see the purpose and order where there are none. This is his philosophical message and he uses, in order to convey it, a procedure which is determined by that very message. The content and the structure of his message are the same. The discovery of the paradoxical essence of life is conveyed to the reader through a style which is built on syntactical as well as logical opposition and paradox. They fill the Zibaldone and find their apodictic form in his Pensieri.¹⁴

In Naddei's analysis of Leopardi's philosophy the Crocian heritage paradoxically still survives. She diagnoses, in fact, a “psychological fracture” whereby Leopardi “crede nella verità e presta fede alla menzogna”¹⁵ and she sees Leopardi's way out of this impasse in his conscious separation “dell'immaginazione e del sentimento dall'intelletto.”¹⁶ In her view, when Leopardi succeeds in silencing his speculative mind he is a poet, but a philosopher when his intellect takes over and stifles poetical inspiration. If this were true, his late poetry would be incomprehensible. Leopardi never abandoned reason, not even in the idyllic phase. Through its dialectical force the poetical process takes place. Rationalism, about which more will be said shortly, is the key concept in understanding Leopardi. It constantly performs a mediating role.

The “psychological fracture” that Naddei finds in Leopardi is the same device which Italian scholars after Croce and “La Ronda” needed in order to justify the presence in Leopardi of both philosophical and poetical thought. The psychological fracture is the precondition to Flora's statement that “al di là del riscatto supremo dell'arte … la sua [Leopardi's] filosofia, astrattamente considerata è sensistica, roussoviana, settecentesca.”¹⁷ But Leopardi's philosophy cannot be considered in the abstract, beyond his art (in fact beyond the “riscatto supremo” of art), for it is the very structure of his art. Even Sansone, who wrote many brilliant pages on Leopardi's philosophy, cannot escape from this psychological fracture. “Il nucleo della spiritualità leopardiana è un sentimento del mondo e non una comprensione teorica di esso.”¹⁸ The first half of Sansone's statement is correct, but its truth is contradicted by the second half. The core of Leopardi's spirituality is truly a sentiment of the world, but the word “sentiment” has in Leopardi a profound theoretical implication. It is a sentiment which, far from being opposed to “the theoretical comprehension of the world,” derives precisely from it.¹⁹

1. PURPOSE AND METHODOLOGY

Il mezzo filosofo combatte le illusioni perchè … è illuso, il vero filosofo le ama e predica, perchè non è illuso: e il combattere le illusioni in genere è il più certo segno d'imperfettissimo e insufficientissimo sapere, e di notabile illusione.

(Z I, 1107-08)

The purpose of the present work is to show the presence in Leopardi of a dialectical inner relationship between philosophy and poetry, seen not as separate moments which exclude each other, but as mutually necessary. The analysis of Leopardi's philosophy will follow the traditional distinctions of ethics, metaphysics, and aesthetics; they will be treated in this order in the three following chapters. Furthermore a philosophical justification will be given to the commonly recognized priority of poetry in Leopardi's life. Aesthetics will appear as the supreme category in Leopardi's phenomenology, dialectically resolving, and thus assuming by transformation, the preceding ethical and theoretical moments.

The methodology used will also be dialectical, for it is the most appropriate in a study which aims at the disclosure of a dialectical thought. The division of the work into three chapters corresponds also to the triadic pattern of dialectics.

The first chapter will deal with the subjective moment of the dialectical process. The emphasis will, therefore, be placed on the experiencing subject and on its modifications by means of external reality. The starting point of Leopardi's self-analysis is sensation which presents itself as the first and unquestionable element of experience. Sensation is also the parameter by which Leopardi analyzes the formation and functions of the human faculties and by which he arrives at the establishment of a hedonistic ethic. Leopardi's sensationalism is, therefore, here considered first for it is the methodology Leopardi himself used in his philosophical inquiry and for it represents, chronologically, the first moment of his philosophical experience.

Leopardi's interest in philosophical speculation was raised by the puzzling nature of sensation. He was a sensationalist by a sentimental adhesion even before becoming a sensationalist through a rational choice. His main concern was with the various and complex ways in which external reality affects the senses. Nature had given him an overly acute sensibility which made him extremely receptive to any contact with the external world and which was the cause of a life of intense suffering. His letters to friends and family are filled with remarks and complaints about the disadvantages which his sensibility had caused him. The short letter he wrote to Antonietta Tommasini on June 19, 1830, is emblematic of his physical and psychological state. “Tutti i miei organi, dicono i medici, sono sani; ma nessuno può essere adoperato senza gran pena, a causa di una estrema, inaudita sensibilità, che … ostinatissimamente cresce ogni giorno: quasi ogni azione, e quasi ogni sensazione mi dà dolore” (Lettere, p. 941).

Remarks of this sort were the basis for the opinion, widely diffused among scholars, that Leopardi's pessimistic philosophy was nothing but the consequence of his personal unhappiness.²⁰ Croce added his weight to the belief, using the letters as evidence. When they were first published, he remarked, they proved that “codeste dottrine alle quali avevamo attribuito valore speculativo, non erano altro che il riflesso e delle sofferenze e delle miserie dell'individuo … delle infermità che lo travagliarono, delle compressioni familiari ed angustie economiche, del vano desiderio di un amore di donna non mai ottenuto.”²¹ Nobody could deny that at the beginning “la cosiddetta filosofia di Leopardi è un movimento piuttosto affettivo che razionale”²² as Sapegno put it. It is impossible not to see “la nettissima dipendenza della metafisica materialistica dallo sviluppo dell'etica pessimistica [of Leopardi]” as Sansone remarked.²³ De Sanctis, in fact, had already noticed this when he wrote that “l'infelicità sua propria [Leopardi's] … lo condusse di buon'ora alla meditazione sul male e sul dolore.”²⁴ The personal condition, however, was only the starting point of Leopardi's philosophical speculation, and exemplifies a natural intellectual procedure. Any speculative inquiry starts from a personal need.²⁵ Croce made an arbitrary inference when he accused Leopardi of having universalized that personal need which was, instead, only the efficient cause of a logical series of empirical observations.²⁶ Nobody ever defended Leopardi from this accusation better than he did himself, and even now his argument certainly deserves more credit than the hypothetical guesses made by scholars through the years. His words are not only for De Sinner, to whom he directly addressed them, but for his contemporaries and for posterity as well. “Quels que soient mes malheurs … j'ai eu assez de courage pour ne pas chercher à en diminuer le poids ni par de frivoles espérances d'une prétendue félicité future et inconnue, ni par une lâche résignation … Ç'a été par suite de ce même courage, qu'étant amené par mes recherches à une philosophie désespérante, je n'ai pas hésité à l'embrasser toute entière; tandis que de l'autre côté ce n'a été que par effet de la lâcheté des hommes, qui ont besoin d'être persuadés du mérite de l'existence, que l'on a voulu considérer mes opinions philosophiques comme le résultat de mes souffrances particulières, et que l'on s'obstine à attribuer à mes circonstances matérielles ce qu'on ne doit qu'à mon entendement. Avant de mourir, je vais protester contre cette invention de la faiblesse et de la vulgarité, et prier mes lecteurs de s'attacher à détruire mes observations et mes raisonnements plutôt que d'accuser mes maladies” (Lettere, p. 1033). His “protest,” however, remained unheard for a long time.

The second chapter of this work will deal with the second and complementary moment of the dialectical process. It will, thus, place the emphasis on the object experienced in an attempt to arrive at the formulation of a theoretical system. The sensationalistic methodology which Leopardi followed strictly led him to a materialistic view of the world. If all knowledge is reducible to physical sensation, it is a logical consequence to consider all its objects as matter. Materialism, thus, appears as the complementary aspect of sensationalism. Many orthodox sensationalists of the eighteenth century would have protested—and some actually did—against the reduction of sensationalism to materialism. Nevertheless this reduction was made by Leopardi and was implicit in a coherent development of the sensationalistic doctrine. La Mettrie, Diderot, Cabanis were, in fact, both sensationalists and materialists. They also had arrived at materialism through a serious sensationalistic study of reality. The suspicion of materialism which many sensationalists shared was based, as Diderot well understood, on the simple-minded concept that traditional philosophical thought had of matter and handed down to his own times. “Le vice de tous ces raisonnements est toujours de confondre une matière activement sensible avec une matière brute, inerte, inorganisée, inanimalisée, le bois avec la chair.”²⁷ Such an argument, however, was to encounter many obstacles since it was opposed to the well-established classical tradition of the Manichean dualism of body and soul, matter and spirit. To give to matter the attributes once considered as belonging exclusively to the spirit meant to do without the spirit altogether. And with spirit the soul would also disappear. The analysis of sensation had brought the rigorous mind of Diderot to the conclusion that “il n'y a qu'une seule opération dans l'homme: c'est sentir. Cette opération, qui n'est jamais libre, se résout en pensée, raisonnement, délibération, désir ou aversion.”²⁸ “Vivre c'est sentir,” Cabanis was to write in his famous book Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, published in 1802.²⁹ This major work to which Cabanis contributed the basis of his scientific training, brought together all the speculative efforts of the idéologues. In his brilliant book Il pensiero degli idéologues Sergio Moravia explains the reason for the confusion and polemic surrounding the newly established materialistic thought. Most of the Idéologues who contributed to it lacked scientific training and were, therefore, easy prey for their opponents. Diderot was an exception. “La lettura di tante opere,” writes Moravia, “la discussione coi confrères dell'ambiente filosofico lo [Diderot] ha[nno] reso persuaso che il tipo di discorso … condotto fin allora sopra certi temi è ormai superato”³⁰—Diderot, in fact, understood that “da un discorso ancora generale bisogna passare a un discorso particolare e scientifico … La ‘filosofia’ della vita e della materia deve lasciare il campo alla ‘scienza’ dell'organisation dell'uomo.”³¹ Leopardi, like most of the Idéologues, remained in the realm of the “philosophy of life and matter” since he lacked the necessary technical training and probably also the desire to enter the field of science. His logical speculations, however, took him very close to those which Diderot, Cabanis, and their followers elaborated with the help of scientific knowledge.

Leopardi knew that sensationalism and materialism owed much to John Locke. The problem of the origin of knowledge and of the formation of ideas had not yet been resolved when Locke decided that a solution could be found only through a detailed analysis of the human intellect and its operations. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding which began as an examination of the ways in which the intellect operates, arrived at the rejection of innatism, thus at the reduction of all ideas to sensation. From it every intellectual operation begins. Even the most abstract ideas, which may seem at first to lack any correlative object in reality, are nothing but the highest levels of abstraction of a series of other ideas, whose first source must be sought in sensation. Hence Locke was considered the founder of empiricism.

From Locke, Leopardi took his criticism of any form of innatism and his reduction of all ideas to sensation. Empiricism was also a part of Leopardi's methodology since experience is at the origin and at the end of every knowing process. It is in fact experience, on the one hand, which supplies the material to the intellect which, without it, is simply a tabula rasa. Intellect, thus, organizes and catalogues the material presented to it by experience. On the other hand, experience is also at the conclusion of any knowing process, for it is the only parameter which we possess for measuring and verifying the obtained results. This discovery led the Idéologues to proclaim the death of metaphysics.³² If human knowledge must limit itself to physical experience, it is vain and pointless to search for the origin of mankind or of the world. It is absurd to try to answer the metaphysical questions with which the human mind has been preoccupied for centuries. Leopardi accepted the criticism of innatism. He branded the monades, the innate ideas and the optimism of Leibnitz, “fables” and praised instead Descartes, Galileo, and Newton as the philosophers who “hanno veramente mutato faccia alla filosofia” (Z I, 1180). Agreeing with Locke and the Idéologues, he wrote: “È già stabilito dagli ideologi che il progresso delle cognizioni umane consiste nel conoscere che un'idea ne contiene un'altra (così Locke, Tracy ec.) e questa un'altra ec” (Z I, 832). And he concludes: “Insomma dal detto qui sopra e da mille altre cose che si potrebbero dire, si deduce quanto giustamente i moderni ideologisti abbiano abolite le idee innate” (Z I, 217-18).

Having rejected innatism and abolished metaphysics the Idéologues turned their philosophical inquiry into an operative tool and began to deal with the social aspect of man. For Leopardi, however, the abolition of metaphysics did not imply an involvement with social problems. What interested him was the individual and the type of philosophical inquiry he pursued was psychological. Like Schiller he believed that “any individual soul, unfolding its inner strength is better than the greatest human society.”³³

The interest in psychology was widespread among materialists. Leopardi shared their conviction that society and education can do little to erase the differences among men created by nature. His personal experience was the best possible proof in support of this belief. Physical makeup cannot be changed either by laws or by education. Society cannot make equal those whom nature created different. This strong belief in natural determinism is what differentiates Leopardi from many of the French writers who influenced him and primarily from Helvétius, despite the frequency with which his name appears in the Zibaldone. Diderot's “Réfutation suivie de l'ouvrage intitulé L'Homme” would have found a great supporter in Leopardi. The focus of Leopardi's philosophical inquiry remained constantly circumscribed to the understanding of the individual man, and if he “conclude con una negazione sempre più decisa dell'anima come essenza immateriale, questo gli consente una più spregiudicata analisi della vita interiore dell'uomo e del suo comportamento.”³⁴

The presence of sensationalistic and materialistic ideas in Leopardi has been long recognized by most of the scholars who have been involved in the analysis of his thought. What they have not yet attempted, however, is the study of these two philosophical elements in the light of a dialectical development leading to a third stage of Leopardi's phenomenology, namely, that of an idealistic aesthetics. This will be the central and final aim of the present work. Only in the light of the third chapter, in fact, will the first two find their real place and acquire their true significance. The three moments of sensationalism, materialism, and idealism are dialectically intertwined and only the necessity of writing about them can justify their division into separate chapters. Writing, as a process of reflecting and analyzing is, as Schiller said, the separating of things from one another. It cannot be avoided; even if it might seem ironical in a work whose aim is to show the impossibility of this very separation.

The idealistic moment in Leopardi's philosophy concerns only his poetry; yet it will be shown that art becomes the highest stage of his philosophic development, the final synthesis, dialectically embodying and resolving the preceding ethical and theoretical moments. For some modern scholars, still reacting against Croce's aesthetic tradition, and concerned with the reactionary implications of idealism in politics, this conclusion may be hard to accept. Yet it will appear as a natural consequence of the development of those materialistic ideas which most critics in Italy today agree are present in Leopardi.

The necessary link between sensationalism, materialism, and idealism was Leopardi's loyalty to rationalism.³⁵ Despite his innumerable attacks on reason and his insistence on the opposition between reason and nature, to the apparent benefit of the latter, Leopardi never abandoned or betrayed reason; even at the cost of his own happiness. He owed much to Descartes and was fascinated by his discovery of the methodological ‘doubt,’ which he transformed into an existential doubt, reversing the Cartesian meaning. “Il mio sistema,” he wrote in the Zibaldone, “introduce non solo uno Scetticismo ragionato e dimostrato, ma tale che … la ragione umana per qualsivoglia progresso possibile, non potrà mai spogliarsi di questo scetticismo … e che non solo il dubbio giova a scoprire il vero … ma il vero consiste essenzialmente nel dubbio” (Z I, 1075-76). It was this loyalty to reason at any cost which made reason perish in his hands.

The reason which perished was the goddess the seventeenth century worshiped, who knew all the answers and found all the solutions. Yet, through his devout worship of this goddess, Leopardi found himself both more enlightened and more souffrant. Reason had appeared as a destructive tool which, having removed past errors, as Bayle said, left man before a bare and cold truth. It had destroyed the pseudo-answers invented by superstition, religion, and fantasy, but had offered no substitute which could replace them. The reality that appeared at the end of this process was meaningless and absurd. Yet, even at this point Leopardi could not abandon reason. What Robert Solomon said for Camus can here be applied to Leopardi. “The Absurd, for him, is a strictly rational conclusion, and it is in the name of reason that he will not attempt to deny or transcend this Absurd.”³⁶ Taken to its extreme consequences, rationalism had destroyed itself for it had discovered the irrationality of existence. Yet this self-defeat was necessary if man was to be freed from the myth of reason. Nietzsche and the existentialists meant precisely this when they spoke of the destruction of reason by means of reason. And this is also what Leopardi meant in the various passages of his Zibaldone where he made the paradoxical statement that “il miglior uso ed effetto della ragione e della riflessione, è distruggere o minorare nell'uomo la ragione e la riflessione” (Z I, 784).³⁷ Only through the use of reason can man discover its deficiencies.

This pessimistic conclusion, however, did not force Leopardi to take the opposite position, namely, to a praise of irrationalism, as it was to do with many romantics. As Solmi rightly pointed out, Leopardi's pessimism was not the romantic outpouring of a Byron or of a Musset. On the contrary, “egli ci offre ferme, esatte, glaciali ricognizioni della realtà.”³⁸ Man is bound to his rational condition and, thus, to suffering. Sentiment is the new force which springs forth from this state. It is a feeling which results from the act of reason and is thus a rational feeling. It represents man's recognition of the inadequacy of reality and his legitimate quest for meanings.³⁹ Sentiment is, therefore, the synthesis of reason and feeling. It brings forth a lament which finds its expression in poetry. In poetry man has created a new reality or better a “surreality,” as Solomon would call it; and like Solomon he can now say “Life itself has no meaning. But so what? ‘What are the meanings in our lives?’ is the only question.”⁴⁰ The world thus created will be a man-made product and will last forever untouchable by nature's destructive forces. “What my world includes that the world does not is value”⁴¹ and this value is “my” own creation. The insufficiency of reality, its lack of purpose allows man to create his own meaningful world, and in so doing he manifests his superiority over nature. The negative moment of Leopardi's dialectics, that of senseless matter, can be overcome only through the exploitation of that very recognition.

Leopardi had always said, in order to exemplify the paradoxical mechanism of existence, that life perpetuates itself through death. The garden which, to those who enter it, evokes images of beauty and harmony, hides in itself suffering and death.⁴² Leopardi, however, does not stop at the recognition of this paradoxical principle. He overcomes it by subsuming it into a higher paradox: that of a beautiful poetry which is born out of an ugly truth. The correlation of philosophy and poetry could not have been more absolute.⁴³

2. CONDILLAC, LA METTRIE, AND SCHILLER

The works of Condillac have been chosen as the parameter for the analysis of Leopardi's sensationalism in the first chapter. The choice was determined by two reasons. In the first place Leopardi's acquaintance with Condillac is easy to prove. The influence of the French philosopher in Italy was deeply felt, especially in Parma where he lived and where Pietro Giordani was educated. The Italian sensationalists with whom Leopardi was acquainted took Condillac as their spiritual father. Furthermore, some of his works were present in the Leopardi family library. To compare him with the founder of the sensationalist movement in France is perhaps the best way to judge Leopardi's own sensationalism. Restricting the comparative analysis to Condillac does not, of course, imply that he was the only sensationalistic influence on Leopardi.

The methodology used in this comparative analysis is strictly positivistic. Condillac's texts are placed side by side with those of Leopardi in order to emphasize their similarity. Some differences are also shown with the purpose of pointing out Leopardi's own individual position and to make the peculiar turn he gave to sensationalism more understandable. This peculiar turn was in the direction of materialism which Condillac would never have accepted.

The comparanda for the analysis of Leopardi's materialism are the works of La Mettrie; yet something will also be said about d'Holbach, Frederick the Great, Diderot, and Sade. The founder of French materialism was chosen to demonstrate clearly the materialistic aspect of Leopardi's philosophy.⁴⁴ A peculiarity of La Mettrie's nature further justifies this choice. His, like Leopardi's, was alien to any type of systematic and rigid theorization and was very receptive to the infinite suggestions of intuition and imagination.

Much has been written on the influence on Leopardi of Rousseau, Voltaire, d'Alembert, Helvétius, d'Holbach, Maupertuis, Montesquieu, and Mme de Staël, from Serban's book Leopardi et la France, published in 1913, up to the recent essays by Frattini.⁴⁵ No extensive comparative analysis, however, has yet been done on Leopardi and Condillac or on Leopardi and La Mettrie. The present study was inspired by a remark by Frattini. After giving an extensive list of the French thinkers quoted by Leopardi in his Zibaldone he writes: “Altri ideologi, come il Condillac e il La Mettrie—nelle cui dottrine morali eudemonistiche, edonistiche e relativistiche si potrebbe ricercare un preludio o preannuncio di certe posizioni del L.—non risultano mai citati nello Zibaldone.”⁴⁶ Since a comparative analysis is not, or at least not exclusively, a search for sources, this work will try to prove that in Condillac and La Mettrie there was much more than “un preludio … di certe posizioni del L.”

In the third chapter, which is the core of the whole work, the acknowledged founder of idealism has been passed over in favor of Schiller for the comparative analysis. Kant (who in any case will not be ignored here) made his major contribution to philosophy in metaphysics and ethics, namely in his Critique of Pure Reason and in his Critique of Practical Reason. Although the importance of his third critique, which deals with aesthetics, should not be minimized, nevertheless it was Schiller, the poet and philosopher, who developed Kantian aesthetics in the direction which is relevant to Leopardi. Furthermore, Schiller's personality is much closer to Leopardi's than Kant's. Both men had to struggle with what they called the two conflicting impulses of human nature: reason and feeling, in order to find a balance between their philosophical minds and their poetical needs.

The comparative analysis of the third chapter does not aim at establishing any direct influence of Schiller on Leopardi. This would be hard to prove, just as it would be hard to prove any direct idealistic influence on Leopardi. If he knew German he knew it very poorly and he was therefore not directly acquainted with Schiller's philosophical writings, which are the basis of the present comparative analysis.⁴⁷

It is legitimate to suppose that what he knew of Schiller and Kant came from his reading of De l'Allemagne. His study of most of Mme de Staël's works is well documented by the many explicit references Leopardi made in the Zibaldone and also by the lists of the readings he himself drew up.⁴⁸ The third section of De l'Allemagne dealt with philosophy in general and German philosophy in particular. Mme de Staël dedicated a whole chapter in that section to Kant. It is interesting, however, to note that of the forty pages devoted to Kant (not too many to begin with) only a few paragraphs were on his Critique of Pure Reason. The rest dealt with his aesthetics and in particular with his ethics, whose rigorism must have made a profound impression on the French writer. Leopardi could not have learned much about Kant's metaphysics from Mme de Staël's pages. His superficial judgment is probably derived from the equally superficial treatment given to it in De l'Allemagne.⁴⁹ The only part of Kant's philosophy which was sufficiently explained, the Critique of Practical Reason, could not have impressed Leopardi since little space was given to man's individual and material happiness.

Leopardi probably read about Schiller in that section of De l'Allemagne called “La littérature et les arts” where a chapter was dedicated to every major German author.⁵⁰ Even in the chapter on Schiller, however, Mme de Staël was much more interested in his moral merit than in his poetical value. Schiller was probably right when, after meeting her, he wrote to Goethe: “Elle est parfaitement insensible à ce que nous appelons la poësie.”⁵¹ Schiller's remark about her ‘philosophical’ mind is also worthy of noting: “Sa nature et son coeur valent mieux que sa métaphysique.”⁵² Yet the chapter which probably influenced Leopardi the most was another. He learned more about Schiller from “Poésie classique et poésie romantique” than from the section devoted exclusively to him. The title of this chapter is already evocative enough. Without knowing it Leopardi was reading in those pages a superficial summary of the first section of Schiller's “Naive and Sentimental Poetry.”⁵³

Leopardi read profusely and without system. The criteria he followed were subjective and selective. He took from what he read only that part which would support his ideas, which were well established early in his life. In his cultural formation one can, therefore, hear the echo of many ideas of the time, as well as of many from the Greek and Roman classics.⁵⁴ There was no contemporary thinker from whom he did not take something. Della Giovanna is right when he says: “[Leopardi] trasse il concetto della natura, della società e della civiltà dal Rousseau, derivò il principio universale dell'egoismo da Helvétius, apprese a dubitar di tutto da Cartesio, e a deridere l'ottimismo leibniziano dal Voltaire … dedusse la teoria dell'assuefazione dal sensismo del Locke.” The list could go on and on.⁵⁵ Yet such syncretism was possible only insofar as he already had those ideas at least in an embryonic form. If many parallels can be drawn between Leopardi and French thought of the eighteenth century, none, however, could be exceptionally relevant. All that has been written on this topic is valid and helpful in the understanding of Leopardi only if it is considered as a whole, without isolating one particular source. De Sanctis long ago had already noticed this when, commenting on the various aspects of Leopardi's philosophy, he wrote: “Trovi nelle sue diverse parti reminiscenze stoiche, platoniche, sensiste, una erudizione varia … Ma il tutto è pensiero originale, e per la inesorabilità delle conclusioni e per la sua compenetrazione in tutte le forze della vita.”⁵⁶ Today, this interpretation is still valid and it has been taken up again by Frattini: “Le sterminate letture [Leopardi's] … avevano principalmente la funzione di offrire come un ricchissimo ideario su cui alimentare alcuni approssimativi nuclei dottrinari che si venivano nel suo pensiero gradualmente formando.”⁵⁷ Finally, Leopardi himself had something to say on this topic: “La lettura dei libri non ha veramente prodotto in me nè affetti o sentimenti che non avessi, né anche verun effetto di questi, che senza esse letture non avesse dovuto nascere da sé” (Z I, 94). For this reason also the present study is not a search for sources. The intention, instead, is to try to reconstruct a spiritual tie among various trends of thought, to see them as the necessary steps of a logical development which points to the continuity between Enlightenment and Romanticism and to the unity between philosophy and art.

Notes

1. Paul De Man, Blindness & Insight. Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 34-35.

2. Robert C. Solomon, The Passions (New York: Anchor Books, 1977), p. 44.

3. Giacomo Leopardi, Tutte le opere di Giacomo Leopardi, ed. Francesco Flora, 5 vols. (Verona: Mondadori, 1968-1973), Lettere, pp. 439-40. The five volumes are so divided: Lettere (1 vol.), Zibaldone di pensieri (2 vols.), Le poesie e le prose (2 vols.). They will be referred to, respectively, as Lettere, Z I, Z II, and PP I, PP II.

4. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson, Schiller, Poet or Philosopher? Special Taylorian Lecture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), p. 3.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., p. 4.

7. Ibid., p. 5.

8. “È stato considerato talvolta il Leopardi come un poeta filosofo, cosa che … si dimostra non esatta per lui come è sempre inesatta per ogni poeta. La sua fondamentale condizione di spirito non solo era sentimentale e non già filosofica, ma si potrebbe addirittura definirla un ingorgo sentimentale” (Benedetto Croce, La letteratura italiana, III, ed. Mario Sansone, L'Ottocento [Bari: Laterza, 1957], 74). As a reply to Croce here is a quote from Frattini's book on Leopardi: l'idillio leopardiano nasce come “il compenetrarsi della facoltà poetica avente per oggetto il bello (cioè … il falso, la finzione) e il diletto con la facoltà filosofica che mira alla conquista del vero” (Alberto Frattini, Giacomo Leopardi [Bologna: Cappelli, 1969], p. 66).

9. Quoted by Mirella Carbonara Naddei, L'eterno e il tempo in Giacomo Leopardi poeta filosofo (Naples: Libreria Scientifica, 1973), p. 51. Her references are mainly to Giovanni Gentile, Poesia e filosofia di Giacomo Leopardi (Florence: Sansoni, 1939).

10. Ibid., p. 133.

11. Bonaventura Zumbini, Studi sul Leopardi, 2 vols. (Florence: Barbera, 1902, 1904). However, in her bibliographical list Naddei forgets to mention the name of Cantella who had also stated the presence in Leopardi of the philosopher as well as of the poet (Francesco Cantella, Giacomo Leopardi filosofo [Palermo: Alberto Reber, 1907], pp. 89-90, 92). Cantella, however, saw in Leopardi's philosophy a prelude of pragmatism.

12. Naddei, p. 162.

13. Ibid., p. 22. She summarizes the first page of the essay by Cesare Luporini, “Leopardi progressivo” in his book Filosofi vecchi e nuovi (Florence: Sansoni, 1947), pp. 185-274; p. 185. Hans Zint also remarks that “una qualità di Leopardi pensatore … lo attesta anche metodologicamente come vero spirito filosofico: la sua prontezza, cioè, e la sua attitudine a circuire gli oggetti presi in esame, osservarli sotto vari angoli visuali” (Hans Zint, “Giacomo Leopardi filosofo,” Rivista di psicologia normale, patologica e applicata, 23, no. 1-2 [Jan.-June 1942], p. 97).

14. A few examples will suffice. “Nessun segno d'essere poco filosofo e poco savio, che volere savia e filosofica tutta la vita” (“Pensiero” 27). “Gli uomini sono miseri per necessità, e risoluti di credersi miseri per accidente” (“Pensiero” 31). “Nessuna qualità umana è più intollerabile nella vita ordinaria, né in fatti tollerata meno, che l'intolleranza” (“Pensiero” 37). “L'uomo è condannato o a consumare la gioventù senza proposito, la quale è il solo tempo di far frutto per l'età che viene, e di provvedere al proprio stato; o a spenderla in procacciare godimenti a quella parte della sua vita, nella quale egli non sarà più atto a godere” (“Pensiero” 47). “La natura, benignamente come suole, ha ordinato che l'uomo non impari a vivere se non a proporzione che le cause di vivere gli s'involano” (“Pensiero” 79) (PP II, 21, 23, 25, 33, 49).

    In the most recent years the value of Leopardi's philosophical thought has been restored, and Antonio Prete's last book Il pensiero poetante (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1980), although limited to the analysis of the Zibaldone, is an effort to show the reciprocal influence and close relationship between philosophy and poetry, with the emphasis placed precisely on Leopardi's conscious refusal at systematization. This line of thought is continued by Burchi in her analysis of I pensieri, where the very literary form chosen by Leopardi—that of thoughts, reflections, “pensées”—reflects, in her view, “la crisi di una vision sistematica della realtà” (Elisabetta Burchi, Il progetto leopardiano: I pensieri [Roma: Bulzoni, 1981], p. 105).

15. Naddei, p. 153.

16. Ibid.

17. Francesco Flora, Leopardi e la letteratura francese (Milan: Rodolfo Malfasi, 1947), pp. 20-21.

18. Mario Sansone, “Il carattere delle Operette morali e il ‘Dialogo della Natura e di un islandese,’” Nuova antologia, 466, no. 91 (Jan. 1956):30.

19. In his review of Battaglia's book L'ideologia letteraria di Giacomo Leopardi, Ernesto Caserta also aims at the dismissal of the old Crocian fallacy. He rejects, in fact, in Battaglia's book “il riconoscimento di una duplice direzione della poesia leopardiana … uno dell'anima … e uno intellettuale … Questa distinzione di due livelli di coscienza,” he continues, “estetica e concettuale, di evidente derivazione crociana, non è convincente … A causa della stessa unità dello spirito … lo svolgimento non può avvenire che in entrambe le coscienze; quindi a misura che il pensiero del Leopardi matura, anche la sua arte matura e si sviluppa: si tratta di un processo dialettico in cui il pensiero non è assente nella poesia ma piuttosto domato, superato, guardato sub specie intuitionis” (Ernesto G. Caserta, “Pensiero, estetica e poesia del Leopardi: una soluzione critica,” Italica, no. 1 [1972], pp. 71-72).

20. This thesis was brought up by the neopositivistic school at the end of the last century. A list of the best known studies of the school can be found in Naddei's book.

21. Croce, p. 70.

22. Natalino Sapegno, “Leopardi,” in Disegno storico della letteratura italiana, ch. 26 (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1948), p. 643.

23. Mario Sansone, “Leopardi e la filosofia del Settecento,” in Leopardi e il Settecento. Atti del I Convegno internazionale di studi leopardiani (Florence: Olschki, 1964), p. 148.

24. Francesco De Sanctis, Opere complete, IV, La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono (Naples: Alberto Morano, 1933), 240.

25. “Non per questo tuttavia la filosofia che nasca dalla situazione personale sarà espressione della situazione personale: lo sarà, se ne nasca e vi rimanga.” “Noi crediamo … che la situazione personale del Leopardi non pregiudichi alla teoricità dei suoi pensamenti, poichè la consideriamo come la base … e non la risultanza del filosofare” (Romano Amerio, “L' ‘ultrafilosofia’ di Giacomo Leopardi,” Filosofia [July 1953], pp. 452, 453).

26. The following passage from the Zibaldone is one of the many in which Leopardi exemplified his philosophical procedure. “Il sentimento della nullità di tutte le cose, la insufficienza di tutti i piaceri … la tendenza verso un infinito che non comprendiamo, forse proviene da una cagione semplicissima e più materiale che spirituale. L'anima umana desidera sempre essenzialmente e mira unicamente … al piacere, ossia alla felicità, che considerandola bene, è tutt'uno col piacere … Questo desiderio e questa tendenza non ha limiti, perch'è ingenita o congenita coll'esistenza” (Z I, 181-82).

27. Quoted in Sergio Moravia, Il pensiero degli idéologues: Scienza e filosofia in Francia (1780-1815) (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1974), p. 161.

28. Ibid.

29. P. G. Cabanis, Oeuvres philosophiques, 2 vols. (Paris: Lehec-Cazeneuve, 1956), I, 168. “La sensibilité physique est le dernier terme auquel on arrive dans l'étude des phénomènes de la vie, et dans la recherche méthodique de leur véritable enchaînement: c'est aussi le dernier résultat, ou … le plus général que fournit l'analyse des facultés intellectuelles et des affections de l'âme” (p. 142; also quoted by Moravia, p. 187). Cabanis' name is mentioned twice in the Zibaldone together with the names of Newton, Leibnitz, Locke, Rousseau, Tracy, Vico, Descartes, Malebranche, and Kant (Z I, 633; Z II, 7).

30. Moravia, p. 162.

31. Ibid.

32. The word “metaphysics” is here used with the modern meaning of the study of things transcending nature, which was given to the word in medieval times.

33. Quoted in F. W. Kaufman, Schiller, Poet of Philosophical Idealism (Oberlin, Ohio: The Academy Press, 1942), p. 36. In his drama Fiesko, Schiller wrote: “The state is a creature of chance, but man is a necessary being, and what else makes a state great and venerable but the moral energies of its individuals” (p. 40).

34. Sansone, “Leopardi e la filosofia del Settecento,” p. 141.

35. Amelotti explains the relationship between sensationalism and rationalism in the eighteenth century. “All'epoca del Leopardi sarebbe improprio parlare di razionalismo e sensismo contrapposti … Razionalismo e sensismo non sono che due modi dell'unico indirizzo scientifico, poiché ormai si è del tutto affermata una scienza, dotata di una propria logica e fondata sull'esperienza sensibile, che ha unito in sé le due correnti.” He also sees the strict connection between sensationalism and materialism (Giovanni Amelotti, Filosofia del Leopardi [Genoa: Dante Alighieri, 1939], p. 17). According to Savarese, “l'argomentare rigorosamente deduttivo” is a characteristic of eighteenth-century materialism (Gennaro Savarese, Saggio sui “Paralipomeni” di Giacomo Leopardi [Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1967], pp. 142-43).

36. Solomon, p. 40.

37. The same concept is expressed in Z I, 140, 280, 924; Z II, 56. Amerio understood this important dialectical turn in Leopardi when he wrote that “la filosofia può restituire l'uomo alla sua naturalità soltanto annullando se stessa … cioè concludendo la propria necessaria distruzione” (p. 455). This is the conclusion at which Eleandro arrives. “L'ultima conclusione che si ricava dalla filosofia vera e perfetta si è che non bisogna filosofare” (PP I, 986). If philosophy, Amerio said, “è il sistema della natura appreso dalla ragione, affinché l'uomo che è ragione, torni alla natura,” “l'ultrafilosofia è il ritorno dello spirito alla natura, la ridiscesa dal reale all'illusione” (pp. 455, 461). Gentile was the first scholar who spoke of this dialectical turn, and who saw the point of arrival of Leopardi's dialectics “in questa filosofia superiore che è negazione della negazione, e che afferma perciò come abbiamo udito da Eleandro, ultima conclusione della filosofia vera e perfetta esser quella, che non bisogna filosofare” (Poesia e filosofia, pp. 36-37).

38. Sergio Solmi, Scritti leopardiani (Milan: All'insegna del pesce d'oro, 1969), p. 56.

39. Commenting on the “Dialogo della Natura e di un islandese” Garin writes: “Il dolore umano nasce da questa sproporzione, dal saperci natura e dal sentirci oltre la natura” (Eugenio Garin, La filosofia, II [Milan: Vallardi, 1947], 415).

40. Solomon, p. 44.

41. Ibid., p. 67.

42. “Entrate in un giardino di piante, d'erbe, di fiori. Sia pur quanto volete ridente. Sia nella più mite stagione dell'anno. Voi non potete volger lo sguardo in nessuna parte che voi non vi troviate del patimento. Tutta quella famiglia di vegetali è in istato di souffrance … Là quella rosa è offesa dal sole, che gli ha dato la vita; si corruga, langue, appassisce. Là quel giglio è succhiato crudelmente da un'ape, nelle sue parti più sensibili, più vitali. Il dolce mele non si fabbrica dalle industriose … virtuose api senza indicibili tormenti di quelle fibre delicatissime, senza strage spietata di teneri fiorellini … Quella donzelletta sensibile e gentile, va dolcemente sterpando e infrangendo steli. Il giardiniere va saggiamente troncando, tagliando membra sensibili, colle unghie, col ferro … Lo spettacolo di tanta copia di vita all'entrare in questo giardino ci rallegra l'anima e di qui è che questo ci pare essere un soggiorno di gioia” (Z II, 1005-06; italics mine). The paradoxical principle of existence applies to nature and to man. However “kind” and “wise” an action might be in its intention, its effect will necessarily be suffering and destruction. Every element of existence needs its opposite and it is forever tied to it. At the end of his philosophical speculation in the Zibaldone, Leopardi is still faithful to its beginning. “La ragione ha bisogno delle immaginazioni e delle illusioni ch'ella distrugge; il vero del falso; il sostanziale dell'apparente … il ghiaccio del fuoco … l'impotenza della somma potenza; il piccolissimo del grandissimo” (Z I, 1171).

43. If the content of Leopardi's early poetry was the ideal seen, and thus celebrated, as inexistent in reality, the content of his late poetry is the real seen in its bareness and devoid of the ideal. It was Binni who first pointed out the poetical value of Leopardi's late poetry, whose inspiration springs from the analytical mind of the poet-philosopher. “Il presente è affrontato e risolto in fantasma poetico, non allontanato, aggirato come momento deteriore ed impoetico. Sì che il pensiero … è sempre al centro dell'ispirazione” (Walter Binni, La nuova poetica leopardiana [Florence: Sansoni, 1971], p. 38). The first edition was in 1947. This important trend in Leopardi's poetry is what Binni called “la tendenza antidillica” which was to find its apotheosis in the lines of “La ginestra” (p. 163). In “La ginestra,” Amelotti wrote, “il Leopardi sente finalmente la bellezza della stessa ragione, della conoscenza chiara e disillusa” (p. 23). The only objection which can be raised to this statement is against the restrictive implication of the adverb “finally.” The discovery of the “beauty” of reason was an early one in Leopardi's life. If it had not been, he would never have arrived at the creation of “La ginestra.”

44. Even though the present work does not concern itself with the influence on Leopardi of classical thought, his profound knowledge of classical philosophy cannot be ignored. A serious study of the topic is the essay “Il Leopardi e i filosofi antichi” by Timpanaro. Here he points out the same characteristic as did Sansone and De Sanctis before him, namely Leopardi's sympathy for all those thinkers in whom he could find the confirmation of his own ideas. Timpanaro, however, wonders about the fact that in a materialist and a hedonist like Leopardi so few references are made to Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. There is no doubt, he says, about the spiritual affinity between Leopardi and Lucretius. “Non possiamo leggere la Ginestra senza pensare al De Rerum Natura,” yet, he concludes, “altro è l'affinità spirituale, altro la lettura e la derivazione diretta.” The manifesto of Leopardi's materialism is the “Frammento apocrifo di Stratone di Lampsaco.” Timpanaro writes that Strato was “il filosofo peripatetico che aveva accentuato, ancor più di Teofrasto, la componente scientifica dell'aristotelismo, fino a ritornare, in sostanza, all'atomismo democriteo.” The choice of Strato, therefore, was “una professione di materialismo e di ateismo.” However, after having examined the influence of Greek philosophy on Leopardi, Timpanaro concludes: “I maestri prediletti di filosofia furono sempre per il Leopardi i materialisti e i sensisti del secolo XVIII” (Sebastiano Timpanaro, “Il Leopardi e i filosofi antichi,” in Classicismo e illuminismo nell'Ottocento italiano [Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1969], pp. 222-24, 228).

45. A list of the major works on this topic may be found in ch. 1, n. 9.

46. Alberto Frattini, “Leopardi e gli ideologi del Settecento,” in Leopardi e il Settecento (op. cit., n. 23), p. 266.

47. Twice in his letters Leopardi speaks of his ignorance of German. Answering to Carlo Antici on March 5, 1825, he comments with good humor on the trick played on him by Antici in sending him a passage “in una lingua per me inintelligibile.” “Il buono è, ch'io non ho alcuno a cui ricorrere per intenderlo, ed ora appunto muore in questo spedale un tedesco senza potersi confessare, perchè in tutta la nostra colta provincia non si trova un prete che sappia quella lingua.” Between 1825 and 1829 Leopardi perhaps tried to learn German, but he must not have made much progress if he answered De Sinner, who had apologized to the poet for his limited knowledge of Italian, “Piacesse al cielo ch'io sapessi o avessi mai saputo altrettanto di lingua tedesca” (Lettere, pp. 518, 965).

48. For information on the publication of those lists, see ch. 2, n. 8.

49. Leopardi mentions Kant's name in his Zibaldone for the first time together with the names of other distinguished philosophers (see n. 29) in order to show the necessity for philosophers to have a system (Z I, 633). He mentions him again, and this time as an example of obscurity—in his view peculiar to German thought (Z I, 1180). A third time in the Zibaldone he mentions Kant as an example of a metaphysician (Z II, 1138). In the same way he speaks about him in a footnote of his “Discorso sopra lo stato presente dei costumi degl'Italiani” where he refers to the “setta e scuola … metafisica, di Kant, suddivisa ancora in diverse sette” (PP II, 587). I do not agree with Sansone's remark that Leopardi did not even try to learn Kantian criticism because “quella filosofia non poteva offrirgli nulla.” Not knowing German he could not even have made this guess. The judgment that it was “la filosofia di attardati metafisici” is superficial and gratuitous. It would have taken Leopardi a lot of hard work just to become able to decide that Kant's philosophy “non poteva offrirgli nulla” (“Leopardi e la filosofia del Settecento,” p. 163).

50. The only two works by Schiller which were present in the Leopardi library during the poet's lifetime were acquired after 1830. Leopardi could not have seen them since he spent the last seven years of his life in Rome, Florence, and Naples and never went back to Recanati. In the catalog of the library they appear in the following form: Schiller, Federico: Storia della guerra dei Trent'anni, tradotta dal tedesco da Antonio Benci, Capolago 1831; I Masnadieri, dramma, Capolago 1832. Schiller's name appears only once in the Zibaldone and it is brought in merely as an example in support of Leopardi's disbelief in friendship: “Anche la possibile amicizia è difficilissima … Schiller uomo di gran sentimento era nemico di Goethe (giacchè non solo fra tali [with the same profession] non v'è amicizia … ma v'è più odio che fra le persone poste in altre circostanze)” (Z I, 1112).

51. Quoted in French by the curator of the 1958 edition of De l'Allemagne, Contesse de Pange. Anne Louise Staël-Holstein, De l'Allemagne, II, La Litterature et les arts (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1958), 92.

52. Ibid.

53. Speaking about Greek art, she writes: “L'homme personnifioit la nature; des nymphes habitoient les eaux, des hamadryades les forêts: mais la nature à son tour s'emparoit de l'homme, et l'on eût dit qu'il ressembloit au torrent, à la foudre, au volcan, tant il agissoit par une impulsion involontaire, et sans que la réflexion pût en rien altérer les motifs ni les suites de ses actions” (ibid., p. 132). In the third chapter similar passages written by Leopardi and Schiller will be analyzed.

54. It is important to point out what Timpanaro wrote about Leopardi's interest in Epictetus and in the philosophy of the Hellenistic period. “L'interesse per Epitteto, e per la filosofia ellenistica … si accord[a] realmente con una fase di disempegno politico e di tentativo di adattamento alla realtà della vita, che il Leopardi attraversò all'incirca dal ‘24 al ‘27” (p. 219). This topic will be treated in the second chapter.

55. Quoted by Frattini in “Leopardi e gli Ideologi,” pp. 256-57.

56. De Sanctis, p. 240.

57. Frattini, “Leopardi e gli Ideologi,” p. 259.