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Giacomo Leopardi
Essays and Dialogues Published by Good Press, 2019 EAN 4057664648952 Table of Contents CONTENTS. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH vii HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 1 DIALOGUE BETWEEN HERCULES AND ATLAS. 15 DIALOGUE BETWEEN FASHION AND DEATH. 19 PRIZE COMPETITION ANNOUNCED BY THE ACADEMY OF SILLOGRAPHS. 24 DIALOGUE BETWEEN A GOBLIN AND A GNOME. 28 DIALOGUE BETWEEN MALAMBRUNO AND FARFARELLO. 33 DIALOGUE BETWEEN NATURE AND A SOUL. 36 DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE MOON 41 THE WAGER OF PROMETHEUS. 48 DIALOGUE BETWEEN A NATURAL PHILOSOPHER AND A METAPHYSICIAN 58 DIALOGUE BETWEEN TASSO AND HIS FAMILIAR SPIRIT 65 DIALOGUE BETWEEN NATURE AND AN ICELANDER. 73 PARINI ON GLORY. 80 DIALOGUE BETWEEN FREDERIC RUYSCH AND HIS MUMMIES.110 REMARKABLE SAYINGS OF PHILIP OTTONIERI.117 DIALOGUE BETWEEN CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND PIETRO GUTIERREZ.139 PANEGYRIC OF BIRDS.144 THE SONG OF THE WILD COCK.151 DIALOGUE BETWEEN TIMANDRO AND ELEANDRO.156 COPERNICUS:167 DIALOGUE BETWEEN AN ALMANAC SELLER AND A PASSER-BY.179 DIALOGUE BETWEEN PLOTINUS AND PORPHYRIUS.182 COMPARISON OF THE LAST WORDS OF MARCUS BRUTUS AND THEOPHRASTUS.196 DIALOGUE BETWEEN TRISTANO AND A FRIEND.206 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. "Manure with Despair, but let it be genuine, and you will have a noble harvest."—RAHEL. The name of Giacomo Leopardi is not yet a household word in the mouths of Englishmen. Few of us have heard of him; still fewer have read any of his writings. If known at all, he is probably coupled, in a semi-contemptuous manner, with other foreign representatives of a phase of poetic thought, the influence of which has passed its zenith. As a contemporary of Byron, Leopardi is perhaps credited with a certain amount of psychological plagiarism, and possibly disregarded as a mere satellite of the greater planet. But if this be so, it is unjust. His fame is his own, and time makes his isolation and grand individuality more and more prominent. What Byron and Shelley, Millevoye, Baudelaire and Gautier, Heine and Platen, Pouchkine and Lermontoff, are to England, France, Germany, and Russia respectively, Leopardi is, in a measure, to Italy. But he is more than this. The jewel of his renown is triple-faceted. Philology, poetry, and philosophy were each in turn cultivated by him, and he was of too brilliant an intellect not to excel in them all. As a philologist he astonished Niebuhr and delighted Creuzer; as a poet he has been compared with Dante; as a philosopher he takes high rank among the greatest and most original men of modern times. One of his biographers (Dovari: "Studio di G. Leopardi," Ancona, 1877) has termed him "the greatest philosopher, poet, and prose-writer of the nineteenth century." Though such eulogy may be, and doubtless is, excessive, the fact that it has been given testifies to the extraordinary nature of the man who is its subject. In Germany and France, Leopardi is perhaps as well known and highly appreciated as in Italy. His poems have been translated into the languages of those countries; and in France, within the last year, two more or less complete versions of his prose writings have appeared. Biographies, reviews, and lighter notices of the celebrated Italian are of repeated and increasing occurrence on the Continent. England, however, knows little of him, and hitherto none of his writings have been made accessible to the English reading public. The following brief outline of his life may in part help to explain the peculiarly sombre philosophical views which he held, and of which his works are chiefly an elaboration. Giacomo Leopardi was born at Recanati, a small town about fifteen miles from Ancona, on the 29th June 1798. He was of noble birth, equally on the side of his father and mother. Provided with a tutor at an early age, he soon left him far behind in knowledge; and when only eight years old, he discarded the Greek grammar he had hitherto used, and deliberately set himself the task of reading in chronological order the Greek authors of his father's library. It was due to his own industry, and his father's
