Operette and Canti

Giacomo Leopardi

Copernicus• The sun’s decision (why)

• Reasons adduced by the first hour

• Who convinced the sun to “race around like a madman”?

• Consider the sun’s words: “to race, in spite of my great size, around a grain of sand?” What is emphasized here? Are there other places where the sun belittles the earth? (167)

• Who is better suited to convince the earth to move: the battle between poetry and philosophy (167-8)

• Copernicus’ opinion of the Earth’s (171) and Man’s position in the old system. Consequences of a change (172), even for the sun (173)

• The sun’s promise to Copernicus

• Use of irony throughout the Operetta

• Leopardi’s position as illustrated in Copernicus

• Central theme of the Operetta

Dialogue Between a Pedlar of Almanachs and a Wayfarer

• Characters and their outlook towards the future and the past

• What makes us wish the past’s return?• What makes one shy away from his own past?• Why does the wayfarer buy the almanach?• Central theme of the dialogue• Leopardi’s phiosophical position regarding time - future

- past - hope - desire

Dialogue Between Tristan and a Friend

• Tristan’s position on life and on who thinks life is happy

(178-9) • What will humanity never believe (179)

• What makes Tristan change his mind? (180)

• What does the nineteenth century believe (181)

• The ancients and the modern in Tristan’s mind (181)

• Considerations on knowledge (182)

• Superiority of the XIX century is based on …

• On the masses and the individuals (183)

• On books (183-4)

• On mediocrity and nullity; Tristan’s position on the different historical epochs (184)

• Central theme of the Operetta

The Canti• To Sylvia

• Sylvia represents the symbol of youth lost in death

• The end of youthful illusions

• The definite collapsing of all hopes

• Sylvia is the figure in which Leopardi illustrates his idea of the existence as misfortune: the conflict between a benign Nature (mother), which inspires the hopes and dreams of youth and a malign Nature, which presents the reality of didillusionment and of death

• Canto notturno (Night Song..)

• Here Leopardi’s thought is condensed: all in this world is vanity and misery

• The from the furious sense of unhappiness to the resignation (awareness of the incumbent evil).

• Not a moment of pleasure but the gradual awakening to the harshness of life, the continuous immersion in the self, the abandoning of self to a limited and individual reality

• Central themes: allegory of human life - knowledge and ignorance- ennui (boredom) - nature

• Imagination and invention dominate (gravitate around reason)

• Reason is a human capacity to analyze reality, in order to reach the truth

• Man’s meditations on himself are strictly connected with the representation of reality (meditation becomes representation)

• One does not need to reminisce the past to realize his desperation, one just needs to look at the present, to understand that the passing years have brought more boredom and unhappiness

• The sum of the sentiments expressed in the canto is translated in the condition of ennui (boredom), the absence of pain (which is not necessarily the presence of pleasure) and of pleasure

• Two main themes appear in the poem

• The moon: represents the life of the cosmos, the moon knows and sees everything, in it we can find the profound serenity that is inherent in all things, serenity that derives from the knowledge of the beginnings and of the ends for which things are created. The moon is the most visible and immediate symbol of the universe, it knows of the passage of time, of the past seasons, of man’s essence. What characterizes cosmic life is the knowability of all things, which man does not possess. This brings desolation - ignorance - man does not know his origin or his objective - the reason or mechanisms of his rapport with others.

• Not knowing anything, man lives in solitude and isolation, his feelings are sadness and suffering (they are irresoluble)

• Hope (which could alleviate the sense of suffering) is absent

• The voice knows only its own frailty, its boredom

• Man’s condition can be divided in three fundamental moments

• 1) the primordial age (prehistoric - no documentation)

• 2) the moment defined by historical pessimism: man have to form communities, live together, create laws (that will ultimately limit their freedom and cause his unhappiness). Man can overcome this impasse by taking shelter in Nature (The Infinite), where the poet abandons himself to an illusory happiness and in the sweetness of a foundering that is the product of the imagination and not of the existential reality

• 3) of cosmic pessimism: the poet cannot overcome his unhappiness because he is overwhelmed by the unhappiness of the world in which he lives. The world itself cannot overcome its unhappy condition, dominated as it is by the infelicity of the world systems in which it is located. Cosmos as abyss, void in which man precipitates

• The Infinite

• It is an idyll that expresses on one side the solitude mixed to a yet unaware unhappiness, on the other the victory over this condition through the contemplation of Nature and its beauty

• This idyll is the manifesto of modern poetry, which longs for and founders in the expectation of the “new”. The poem rests on correspondences (Baudelaire): between the earth and the sky, between silence and the voice of nature, between the inaccessible and what can be seen.

• The divisions of the poem

• 1) always 2) but sitting and gazing 3)and like (when I hear) 4) and thus

• The structure of the poem is binary: 1) to the hedgerow (the real world, that is seen and experienced) 2) beyond the hedgerow (the surreal, imagined immensity of the unknown)

• (The reality beyond the hedgerow exists and represents what one longs to experience and live) (This: present; that: the other reality)

• Suddenly something happens: the contingent reality becomes distant, is pushed aside by the spirit, by the imagination, and the other reality comes near, so that the poet is almost afraid (of the immensity that opens in front of his eyes)

• The other reality draws so near (in the imagination) that the poet immerses himself in it, savoring its great sweetness

• The only elements of reality are: the hill, the hedgerow, the ruffling of the leaves (voice of the wind). From these elements is born the contemplation of the infinite that leads to the most infinite silences and the most profound peace.

• The hedgerow represents the separating limit between the two realities, but also the sense of exclusion

• The hedge was always dear to the poet, and now? Now he is seeking something new, he imagines a different world, where the uncertainty (and yet the desire) scare him

• The landscape represents the infinity, the divine, the connection not only with the reality of the world, but with the ultra-metaphysical reality

• The voice of the wind leads the poet from the contingent to the other, desired, reality. It is assimilated to the voice of the superhuman silence of the boundless spaces in which one can reach the most profound peace. The immensity transforms itself in absolute reality in which human thought can drown. The voice of the wind brings the correspondence between the past seasons and the present, between the past (as illusion of happiness) and the present, the only time that can now produce sensations, emotions and that will soon lose its vitality (it will become past)