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Translated by Frederick Townsend ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

"But wherefore give him life?"
First, I cannot comment on this particular translation, as I read and studied the Canti in Italian - so my 5 stars ought to be taken cum grano salis.

Also, who am I to give stars to Leopardi? In fact, it would be rather silly of me to attempt, here, in a few lines, a short literary criticism of the work of one of the greatest poets in Italian language as well as a giant of human thought. Libraries can be filled with books on this enfant prodige, who as a child would toy with greek, latin and hebrew philology, write tragedies, essays on theology, histories of astronomy - as Italo Calvino puts it, when he writes a poem on the moon, Leopardi knows precisely well what he is talking about - or could forge a Callimachus and fool the world authorities on ancient greek literature. His Zibaldone di Pensieri ("Eggnog of thoughts") anticipates contemporary philosophy from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche to Heidegger - indeed it anticipates the contemporary age; his entire work is like a big bang, and contains in nuce future existentialism, nihilism, ontology. So, I will just rant a little about what of Leopardi speaks to me personally.

Men are not created equal. I hold this truth to be self evident. So did Leopardi. He knew he was not one of the "greggia", not one of the sheep(the sheep, whose stolid happiness he envied). Some of us are different, as he tells us. There are people that can experience in advance what our kind will explore in the future centuries. And most of them burn, like fuses burn. We watch them fall with an admixture of admiration, horror and awe - as the tragic chorus watches Oedipus.

That is why I do not believe that "Cosmic Pessimism" is a good label for Leopardi. Sure, that would attract a teenager, and indeed at seventeen, I myself could not open his Canti without reading all of them, many times, usually ending up at late night, early morning.

But what is truly universal about Leopardi is his incredible sensitivity for the "being", his "esprit de finesse". He does not "understand" the infinite. He can feel it, as a revelation. In "L'Infinito" he describes - as a real, physical experience - the simplification of the universe to the cosmic equation that brahmanism would write as Brahman=Ataman (without him knowing anything of the Upanishad):

But sitting here, and watching here, in thought,
I create interminable spaces,
greater than human silences, and deepest
quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify.

(...) and I remember the eternal
and the dead seasons, and the living present
and its sound (...)

Shipwreck can be sweet in the sea of the absolute, as it is to drown thoughts in this immensity; but as Leopardi points his eyes into its depths, reality poses him radical questions. At the end, Leopardi answers are notoriously horrific: Nature as a stepmother, and not a good one. Cruelty as at the core of the being. Men, women, children, no more valuable or respected than ants. And life itself the crazy joke of a disturbed mind. Get a taste (and pardon my poor translation):

In travail man is born
and often his birth causes death
Pain and torment he feels
with his earliest breath
and from the first, his parents fondly strive
to console him of being born (...)

We do not have to believe his answers - Nietzsche found different (yet similar) ones, so did Buddha, or Epicure or St. paul... although we certainly cannot dismiss his pessimism by trivializing the personal experience of such an excellent mind, as some mediocre contemporaries have tried to.

But art, as we know, is not "a way to say things", it is a form of knowledge, a revelation for the artist foremost, as well as its transmission to others in the form that is closest to that pristine experience of truth. We read Leopardi to relive the enlightening of his soul, or at least to try. Perhaps at the end, answers are not so important.

The Best English Rendition Available
There have been few attempts to render the sublime poet of Italian literature into English as of the last few decades, but none have been able to best Frederick Townsend's 1888 translations. The languor, the rhythm and the syntax is versified with intelligence and sensibility, while the depth of the abandon unto the ennui of a prescient amor fati is nuanced with deft and stress. On the merits of Leopardi I have already spoken in previous reviews, but suffice it to say for those that have yet to become acquainted with the Italian poet, classist, philologist and philosopher of the 1800, the crass analogy of liking him to a Wordsworth with the cadences and concision of a Keats may be useful; whereas for those more familiar with German literature you may well make the claim, as absurd as these may be, that he is similar to Holderlin, in a similar fashion given to a riddled existential angst, while intimating the dismal distress that only Nietzsche was since apt to give voice to, yet Leopardi's "pessimism" (beware those of you who adopt this term without responsible and adequate insight) is more akin to Shopenhauer. No literarary intellecual or lover should go without experiencing Giacomo Leopardi, a man who in spite of his avowed atheism and consonent hopelessness was as spiritual as any poet has ever dared to be.
Upon the first edition of Townsend's translation of the Italian Lyric genius, O. Brook Frothingham observed in its preface that "Giacomo Leopardi is a great name in Italy amoung philosophers and poets but is quite unknown in this country." Why the English have yet to embrace this poetic genius 120 years later is a topic well worth discussing, especially so because in France, Germany, and Spain he has been received with the highest interest and esteem. Whaereas he may be classified yet as a Romantic poet by the English readership he would never be branded as such elsewhere. Leopardi poses questions and allows them to lyrcally dissolve into a peculiar angst-ridden beauty; he quantifies the infinite and disenchants the illusive tendencies of human nature while eulogizing them by means of an elegy; Leopardi reflects on language and tradition with an astute picturesque dissonance; he labours through the disquiet of a melancholy spirit while wrestling with an absent divinity. It is a hybrid beauty that depicts cantos as if Giorgio De Chirico were absorbed by Edvard Munch. And most astounding is the fact that from this monster comes beauty as pristine as any modernity has been able to compose. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Enchanting Fables of Disenchantment
"Leopardi is one of the greatest of poets and prose writers, and like Kleist and Baudelaire, a truly original, devastating sensibility. Nothing is more overdue than a proper edition of Leopardi in English."
-- Susan Sontag

Fiabe che incantano. Melodie filosofiche di una strana saggezza che tradisce i metodi antichi in un dialogo strumentalizzato dal'epicentro del cuore stordito da illusioni intelletuali. Poesia in prosa.

The translation here is adequate, and just as sharp as the earlier rendition by Betram Dobell but not as stellar as the Columbia University Press scarce edition entitled "The Moral Dialogues" where Patrick Creagh's modern version is still the best one available. The above quotation of Sontag is referring to the Creagh translation. However it bears mentioning that this is the only version I have ever encountered that has the original Italian alongside the English. Giovanni Cecchetti is a fine man of letters and interprets the tone of the tales and dialogues well. His introduction and notes are very helpful and fill some gaps a lay reader will likely have. All in all, by the by the best choice out there.

A book that's worth more than what is costs.
Operette Moralli is quite humorous some times. A more accurate translation of the title would be "small ethical works," but the current title is more truthful to the actual content. Giacomo Leopardi's work deals with subjects like suicide, egoism of men, the role hope plays in out lives, the genius's fate, similarities between fashion and death (I was as surprised as you are but he's actually right!), pleasure, happiness, poetry, philosophy, death, love, etc.

I think his humorous dialogues show much more invention and wit than other, more serious, essays. Although seriousness pervades every work it's not always visible. The hopelessness and pessimism that runs through most of the Operette Moralli may not suit the style of most people. But hopelessness here is the result of strength, and it's done with no hatred. Some of his opinions are surprisingly contemporary.

There are better books out there in my opinion, but this is still a very good book, and as Leopardi himself notes: "... books now are mostly written in less time than one needs to read them, and you see very well that since they cost what they are worth, they also last in proportion to what they cost."
... Read more

Product Description
Still unfinished at the time of his death, Thoughts, now in its first English translation, represents Giacomo Leopardi’s urgent desire to organize his lifetime’s observations of mankind, life, and the world.

Written by the greatest Italian poet and thinker of the 19th century, these timeless musings contain immense philosophical and psychological insight. Ranging from mankind to nature, social order to the individual soul, they reveal a man of brilliance struggling to reconcile all that he sees around him.Foreword by Edoardo Albinati. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

gloom and doom in the style of the Pensees
I discovered this long ago -- quite by accident -- deep in my college library and have always wanted to own a copy.It's the reflections of an Italian poet who lived around the time of Byron.

The dude was bleak.You thought Marcus Aurelius was bad?These are some of the most depressing little apercus you're ever gonna read.

Here's a sample of his irremediable blackness:

"Man is condemned either to consume his youth (which is the only time to store up fruit for the years to come and make provision for himself) without a purpose, or to waste it in procuring enjoyments for that part of his life in which he will no longer be capable of enjoyment." (p. 37)

In fact, this volume, consisting mainly of one such reflection after another, is so bleak it's almost comic.But, as Housman's Mithridates discovered, it can be salubrious in small doses.

The author's oft-anthologized poem, "The Broom," brings up the rear of this slim volume.

It may interest you to know that Leopardi, at least according to his blurb in "The Norton Anthology of Western Literature," is said to have studied so assiduously that he morphed into a nearly-blind hunchback (hence his gloom), eventually dying of despair.

This has long made me wonder if it really is medically possible not merely to study so much that you become a hunchback, but to actually die of despair.Sounds like his doctors were more familiar with poetry than they were with simple physiology.

Neglected classic of pessimism now available in English
Leopardi's _Thoughts_ (Pensieri) combines the aphoristic style of Pascal and other French moralists with the pessimistic world-view that inspired Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and other 19th century readers of his work.Leopardi in Italy occupies a place equivalent to Emerson in the US: read by every schoolchild and understood by almost none of them, yet still taken as emblematic of the national spirit.His pessimism may be absolute but it is also intensely spirited and does point towards resignation but rather towards exhiliartion.Everyone should read this book, along with his other work of prose, the _Moral Essays_. ... Read more

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L'opera, fin troppo trascurata, del più grande filosofo italiano della modernità ... Read more

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These translations of the major poems of Giacomo Leopardi (1798--1837) render into modern English verse the work of a writer who is widely regarded as the greatest lyric poet in the Italian literary tradition. In spite of this reputation, and in spite of a number of nineteenth-and twentieth-century translations, Leopardi's poems have never "come over" into English in such a way as to guarantee their author a recognition comparable to that of other great European Romantic poets.

By catching something of Leopardi's cadences and tonality in a version that still reads as idiomatic modern English (with an occasional Irish or American accent), Leopardi: Selected Poems should win for the Italian poet the wider appreciative audience he deserves. His themes are mutability, landscape, love; his attitude, one of unflinching realism in the face of unavoidable human loss. But the manners of the poems are a unique amalgam of philosophical toughness and the lyrically bittersweet. In a way more pure and distilled than most others in the Western tradition, these poems are truly what Matthew Arnold asked all poetry to be, a "criticism of life." The translator's aim is to convey something of the profundity and something of the sheer poetic achievement of Leopardi's inestimable Canti.Amazon.com Review
By general consensus, Giacomo Leopardi is the greatest Italian poet since Dante. His influence on the major Italian poets who come after him--Montale, Ungaretti,and Pavese--isindisputable. Yet he's not well known to English speakers, largely becausehis work has resisted translation. That's why this fine new version of Selected Poems isparticularly welcome. The Irish poet Eamon Grennan hasmanaged to clear away the cobwebs, judiciously employing a loose blankverse reminiscent of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Along with capturing thelyrical fluidity of Leopardi's rhythms, Grennan reminds us that a poem like"The Solitary Thrush" is exactly contemporary with Keats's "Ode to aNightingale"--and that Leopardi is more acid than the Romantics ever were:

You'll not grieve, surely,
For the life you've led, since even
The slightest twist of your will
Is nature's way. But to me,
If I fail to escape
Loathsome old age--
When these eyes will mean nothing
To any other heart, the world be nothing
But a blank to them,
Each day more desolate, every day
Darker than the one before--what then
Will this longing for solitude
Seem like to me? What then
Will these years, or even I myself,
Seem to have been? Alas,
I'll be sick with regret, and over and over,
But inconsolable, looking back.

Customer Reviews (4)

"But wherefore give him life?"
First, I cannot comment on this particular translation, as I read and studied the Canti in Italian - so my 5 stars ought to be taken cum grano salis.

Not being able to review this edition, should I be so silly to give "stars" to Leopardi himself?In fact, it would be rather silly of me to attempt, here, in a few lines, a short literary criticism of the work of one of the greatest poets in Italian language as well as a giant of human thought. Libraries can be filled with books on this enfant prodige, who as a child would toy with greek, latin and hebrew philology, write tragedies, essays on theology, histories of astronomy - as Italo Calvino puts it, when he writes a poem on the moon, Leopardi knows precisely well what he is talking about - or could forge a Callimachus and fool the world authorities on ancient greek literature. His Zibaldone di Pensieri ("Eggnog of thoughts") anticipates contemporary philosophy from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche to Heidegger - indeed it anticipates the contemporary age; his entire work is like a big bang, and contains in nuce future existentialism, nihilism, ontology. So, I will just rant a little about what of Leopardi speaks to me personally.

Men are not created equal. I hold this truth to be self evident. So did Leopardi. He knew he was not one of the "greggia", not on of the sheep he envied. Some of us are different, as he tells us. There are people that can experience in advance what our kind will explore in the future centuries. And most of them burn, like fuses burn. We watch them fall with an admixture of admiration, horror and awe - as the tragic chorus watches Oedipus.

That is why I do not believe that "Cosmic Pessimism" is a good label for Leopardi. Sure, that would attract a teenager, and indeed at seventeen, I myself could not open his Canti without reading all of them, many times, usually ending up at late night, early morning.

But what is truly universal about Leopardi is his incredible sensitivity for the "being", his "esprit de finesse". He does not "understand" the infinite. He can feel it, as a revelation. In "L'Infinito" he describes - as a real, physical experience - the simplification of the universe to the cosmic equation that brahmanism would write as Brahman=Ataman (without him knowing anything of the Upanishad):

But sitting here, and watching here, in thought,
I create interminable spaces,
greater than human silences, and deepest
quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify.

(...) and I remember the eternal
and the dead seasons, and the living present
and its sound (...)

Shipwreck can be sweet in the sea of the absolute, as it is to drown thoughts in this immensity; but as Leopardi points his eyes into its depths, reality poses him radical questions. At the end, Leopardi answers are notoriously horrific: Nature as a stepmother, and not a good one. Cruelty as at the core of the being. Men, women, children, no more valuable or respected than ants. And life itself the crazy joke of a disturbed mind. Get a taste (and pardon my poor translation):

In travail man is born
and often his birth causes death
Pain and torment he feels
with his earliest breath
and from the first, his parents fondly strive
to console him of being born (...)

We do not have to believe his answers - Nietzsche found different (yet similar) ones, so did Buddha, or Epicure or St. paul... although we certainly cannot dismiss his pessimism by trivializing the personal experience of such an excellent mind, as some mediocre contemporaries have tried to.

But art, as we know, is not "a way to say things", it is a form of knowledge, a revelation for the artist foremost, as well as its transmission to others in the form that is closest to that pristine experience of truth. We read Leopardi to relive the enlightening of his soul, or at least to try. Perhaps at the end, answers are not so important.

beautiful poetic pessimism
giacomo leopardi is an incredibly fascinating and yet somewhat obscure figure, and anyone who avoids his poetry because of it's pessimism or nihilism is really missing out. at times he becomes unbearably depressing and this is certainly a turn off past a point, but we should admire him nonetheless for his candor and commitment to expressing what he believed was truth. his bleak outlook on human life, contrary to popular belief, did not necessarily stem from his individual misfortunes (such as becoming a hunchback) or personal misery. he was simply a brilliant, lucid man who was aware that human life is ephemeral and without ultimate justification or meaning. anyone with the slightest bit of poetic or philosophical sensitivity to the nearly unfathomable miracle of the world and our lives can immediately understand where he is coming from. in any case, whether you are an optimist or a pessimist, you cannot afford to miss out on leopardi's work.

Leopardi Afresh
... The great Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) is radiant again in a fresh translation, "Leopardi: Selected Poems" ... that appeared just as Iris Origo's marvelous 1935 biography, "Leopardi, A Study in Solitude" ... was reissued. Leopardi's birth into an aristocratic Tuscan family was no protection against a case of scoliosis that left him hunchbacked, a permanent invalid, unlovable in the eyes of any woman he might come to love. Yet his poetic world is often as enchanting and full of health as a convalescent's, for whom all things come alive, and "roofs and meadows and little hills / Are shining in the sun." Leopardi celebrates such moments of renewal and delight, though his self-forgetful pleasures always return him to a lonely prison. But this is the human condition, not just the poet's. Nature "drives all things to their destruction," the "feast-day is over in a flash, / The work-day comes on, and time takes away / All we are and do." So, he asks, why not love one another? Why turn cold or quarrel, when death sweeps everyone into darkness?

Cosi` tra questa immensita` s'annega il pensier mio...
Introducing a poet who divulged the voice of exclusion seems a bit of a paradox, yet it is precisely what his valiant translator seems to suggest to be doing given the relative want of interest that presently he has been receiving in the U.S. The translation is successfully carried out to the extent that the mood is respected and the melancholy distance is imparted rather faithfully. The resulting exposition of Leopardi's inestimable poetry bears the stamp of a poet who is in tune with his subject and displays considerable lyrical dexterity. However for all the agility that is here employed - so as to reproduce a work akin with the original - as always it inevitably does not do justice to the tremor that transpires through the Italian undulating and langorous resonance. The syntax is also essential to understanding the reach of this poet that only Holderlin, Rilke and Trakl may be said to have deployed a similar structural approach. Giorgio Agamben's book "Language and Death," would be a good source for English readers to "get a feel" of the poet's startling implosion of loss; the subtle fragility of his theory of noia (tedium); the whole of it punctuated with and surging, tentalizing strokes that emerge in the illuminations of village damsels, of frolicsome lads or of the naively insouciant Silvia. The poems herein abound with familiar illustrations of pastoral life and of the sublime that most all Romantic poets resorted to; The fashion in which Leopardi was able to express such aloofness and despair is tragic, brilliant and engagingly dispassionate. In the words of Oliver Goldsmith: "We cannot hesitate to say that in almost every branch of mental exertion, this extraordinary man seems to have had the capacity of attaining, and generally at a single bound, the very highest exellence. Whatever he does, he does in manner that makes it his own; not with a forced or affected, but a true originality. stamping on his work, like other masters, a type that defies all counterfeit." Amoungst others Nietzsche had the daring to translate Leopardi's poetry. These poets shared much more than simply a common profession in Philology...they were far too profound for anyone to fathom the abyss which they ceaselessly foundered within so as to dolcify the excesses of our tragic sense of life. ... Read more

Product Description
Leopardi's rejection of the Catholicism of his childhood and Enlightenment optimism gives his work a contemporary feel. In J.G. Nichols's translations we grasp the consistent strain of thought in writing, including a biography woven of Leopardi's own words. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

"But wherefore give him life?"
First, I cannot comment on this particular translation, as I read and studied the Canti in Italian - so my 5 stars ought to be taken cum grano salis.

Also, who am I to give stars to Leopardi? In fact, it would be rather silly of me to attempt, here, in a few lines, a short literary criticism of the work of one of the greatest poets in Italian language as well as a giant of human thought. Libraries can be filled with books onthis enfant prodige, who as a child would toy with greek, latin and hebrew philology, write tragedies, essays on theology, histories of astronomy - as Italo Calvino puts it, when he writes a poem on the moon, Leopardi knows precisely well what he is talking about -or could forge a Callimachus and fool the world authorities on ancient greek literature. His Zibaldone di Pensieri ("Eggnog of thoughts") anticipates contemporary philosophy from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche to Heidegger - indeed it anticipates the contemporary age; his entire work is like a big bang, and contains in nuce future existentialism, nihilism, ontology. So, I will just rant a little about what of Leopardi speaks to me personally.

Men are not created equal. I hold this truth to be self evident. So did Leopardi. He knew he was not one of the "greggia", not one of the sheep (the sheep whose stolid happiness he envied). Some of us are different, as he tells us. There are people that can experience in advance what our kind will explore in the future centuries. And most of them burn, like fuses burn. We watch them fall with an admixture of admiration, horror and awe - as the tragic chorus watchesOedipus.

That is why I do not believe that "Cosmic Pessimism"is a good label for Leopardi. Sure, that would attract a teenager, and indeed at seventeen, I myself could not open his Canti without reading all of them, many times,usually ending up at late night, early morning.

But what is truly universal about Leopardi is his incredible sensitivity for the "being", his "esprit de finesse". He does not "understand" the infinite. He can feel it, as a revelation. In "L'Infinito" he describes - as a real, physical experience - the simplification of the universe to the cosmic equation that brahmanism would write as Brahman=Ataman (without him knowing anything of the Upanishad):

But sitting here, and watching here, in thought,
I create interminable spaces,
greater than human silences, and deepest
quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify.

(...) and I remember the eternal
and the dead seasons, and the living present
and its sound (...)

Shipwreck can be sweet in the sea of the absolute, as it is to drown thoughts in this immensity; but as Leopardi points his eyes into its depths, reality poses him radical questions. At the end, Leopardi answers are notoriously horrific: Nature as a stepmother, and not a good one. Cruelty as at the core of the being. Men, women, children, no more valuable or respected than ants. And life itself the crazy joke of a disturbed mind. Get a taste (and pardon my poor translation):

In travail man is born
and often his birth causes death
Pain and torment he feels
with his earliest breath
and from the first, his parents fondly strive
to console him of being born (...)

We do not have to believe his answers - Nietzsche found different (yet similar) ones, so did Buddha, or Epicure or St. Paul... although we certainly cannot dismiss his pessimism by trivializing the personal experience of such an excellent mind, as some mediocre contemporaries have tried to.

But art, as we know, is not "a way to say things", it is a form of knowledge, a revelation for the artist foremost, as well as its transmission to others in the form that is closestto that pristine experience of truth.We read Leopardi to relive the enlighteningof his soul, or at least to try. Perhaps at the end, answers are not so important.

Cosi` tra questa immensita` s'annega il pensier mio...
Introducing a poet who divulged the voice of exclusion seems a bit of a paradox, yet it is precisely what his valiant translator seems to suggest to be doing given the relative want of interest that presently he has been receiving in the U.S. The translation is successfully carried out to the extent that the mood is respected and the melancholy distance is imparted rather faithfully. The resulting exposition of Leopardi's inestimable poetry bears the stamp of a poet who is in tune with his subject and displays considerable lyrical dexterity. However for all the agility that is here employed - so as to reproduce a work akin with the original - as always it inevitably does not do justice to the tremor that transpires through the Italian undulating and langorous resonance. The syntax is also essential to understanding the reach of this poet that only Holderlin, Rilke and Trakl may be said to have deployed a similar structural approach. Giorgio Agamben's book "Language and Death," would be a good source for English readers to "get a feel" of the poet's startling implosion of loss; the subtle fragility of his theory of noia (tedium); the whole of it punctuated with and surging, tentalizing strokes that emerge in the illuminations of village damsels, of frolicsome lads or of the naively insouciant Silvia. The poems herein abound with familiar illustrations of pastoral life and of the sublime that most all Romantic poets resorted to; The fashion in which Leopardi was able to express such aloofness and despair is tragic, brilliant and engagingly dispassionate. In the words of Oliver Goldsmith: "We cannot hesitate to say that in almost every branch of mental exertion, this extraordinary man seems to have had the capacity of attaining, and generally at a single bound, the very highest exellence. Whatever he does, he does in manner that makes it his own; not with a forced or affected, but a true originality. stamping on his work, like other masters, a type that defies all counterfeit." Amoungst others Nietzsche had the daring to translate Leopardi's poetry. These poets shared much more than simply a common profession in Philology...they were far too profound for anyone to fathom the abyss which they ceaselessly foundered within so as to dolcify the excesses of our tragic sense of life.

This Leopardi is much preferable to Lockert Library version.
This English version is of the COMPLETE poems, not just a selection, like that published by Princeton as part of its Lockert Library series.Moreover, this translation by Nichols is far more accurate, formal, andliteral than the loose and slangy "translations" by EamonGrennan.Leopardi is a great poet, and this is a valuable book.The otherindispensable Leopardi book currently in print is the Cecchetti translationof the "Moral Essays and Dialogues," published by the Universityof California Press, in its Biblioteca Italiana series.This is one of themost underrated works of all 19th-century literature!If you likeLeopardi's poetry, or the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, or evenSamuel Beckett, read this book! ... Read more

Product Description
Biography. Giacomo Leopardi (1798 - 1837) is widelyconsidered the greatest Italian poet since Dante. He was a scholar andphilosopher whose outstanding scholarly and philosophical works andsuperb poetry place him in the pantheon of great 19th-centurywriters. Iris Origo's masterful biography is an incisive psychologicalportrait of the melancholy, semi-cloistered, hunchback poet whosegenius, pain, and frustrated hopes found their outlet in poetryadmired for its brilliance, intensity and seemingly effortlessmusicality. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

beautiful and sad book about a tragic but great figure
iris origo really has something here, and her poetic biography of the great giacomo leopardi is a classic in itself. the darkness and despair of leopardi's verse is probably one reason for leopardi's obscurity and little known philosophical works, but the overwhelming sense of nothingness and meaninglessness that his work conveys is no reason to put him aside.we do not necessarily have to agree with an author about everything to enjoy the aesthetic brilliance and the passion present in his essays and poetry. anyone who gets a dark thrill (as i do) from philosophy and poetry that focuses on the more shadowy and sad side of existence will devour leopardi's work. he would undoubtedly gotten along with and befriended the two other great literary prophets of doom, samuel beckett and arthur schopenhauer, and unconsciously shares their philosophy and really disturbing reflections about the emptiness of human life and it's accidental and contingent origin. leopardi was a quite genuine pessimist, unlike schopenhauer who betrayed through his lifestyle and even occasionally in his work itself a love and passion for life and art, and his gloom is not simply temperamental or tongue in cheek as it with arthur, but is very serious and profoundly felt.leopardi's work openly refers to the poetic imagination and man's feelings of divinity or supremacy in the universe as "beautiful illusions", which is all the more infuriating to those who have them because does not violently condemn them or even make an effort to disprove them objectively, but just dismisses them offhandedly as the obvious products of wishful thinking and fanciful self delusion.despite the depressing and sometimes unbearable bleakness of his work, i think giacomo leopardi is unjustly obscure and the best italian poet since dante.all of his work is a must read for students or lovers of philosophy and poetry.

The gods be thanked...
I am so grateful to this publisher for having reissued the books of Iris Origo. I first read this book a dozen years ago and it has continued to haunt me since.

Origo has created a masterpiece from her tale ofLeopardi's short and lonely life. This is a book where the atmosphere ismore important than the facts. No poet could object to coming to life,thus, between the lines setting forth Origo's appreciation of his art andsympathy for his suffering.

Leopardi can hope for no better chance ofliterary resurrection than that given to him by Iris Origo. If thisbiography sends you in search of his poetry it has done its job. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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Originally published in 1882.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A delirious experience
The recent effort to translate Leopardi made by Anne Paolucci must be acknowledged as a statement which betokens the persistent affection which scholars develop for the poet from Recanati while sauntering into Renaissance verse or German Idealism. Such is the fate which Dr. Paolucci found herself challanged by. She had previously been engaged with her husband and likewise redoubtable scholar Henry Paolucci in an essay for the "Reader's Advisor - Vol. 2" and her immersion became complete within time as she laboured through Hegel, dramatic theory, and the theatre of the absurd. She's also written fiction, poetry and plays herself: the merit of which i cannot speak of.
We find a translator who is much less concerned with translation, but rather wrestles with the passion and intimacy, the restlessness and ennui that Leopardi elicits. The translator lives the lines, absorbs the poetry and stands in awe in relation to it, practically distraught over the depth and definition which the canti give from and meaning to. It is a rare expression of love we find here, where the relationship between translator and her subject exposes a beauty the poetry often fails to disclosse due to the lyrical ecstasy we founder within.
In the introduction the translator dabbles into themes Leopardi readers will have no chance but to become enrapt by, such as "noia" and his "pessimism". She relates that she tried to "approximate the clearness and simplicity of Leopardi while respecting the tight syntax, abrupt transitions, and conversational tone". The memory of the great Thomas Bergin is somewhat overstated but necessary. Here his name is flaunted but only the skeletal presence of hs work (a year or so in 1986 - his last prject before dying and I dare say his most daunting one).
Dr. Paolucci reprints a letter by Bergin on the matter which may shed light on the difficulty of the task, the contribution of the translator of Dante, Boccaccio and Vico and the influence which presents itself in the delicate balance of the final versions. In a letter dated January 28, 1986 and addressed to Anne Paolucci we read:
"It was probably a mistake to begin with this one (L'Infinito) - it is, as you know, very tight and compacted. Even with your version and my school text original (very heavily glossed and frequently paraphrased) I found it very hard work. What I was after here was to preserve the meter...and keep the meaning honest -not always literal but at least saying what L. is saying. And of course I agree that a translation should not sound like translation, often however L.'s language is faintly archaic and a good translation is bound to mirror that."
Dr. Paolucci is too aware of competing translations and works through them as well. Ultimately the final product is much more an effort of her own than a concerted one with Thomas Bergin, who could not have been satisfied with the translation, for it sound too much like a translation (even Nietzsche gave up on such a task while living in Turin and enamoured by the Italian's uberhuman talent). Dr. Paolucci is indeed aware of that, but the magnetism of this enterprise lies elsewhere; the clarity and simplicity is retained and the syntax is a genial parallel, but we find ourselves swallowed by the aura of her struggles with the poet and the genuine engagement of her labour of love is a vehicle which elucidates the intimacy and candour of the verses as it stupefies the faculties into a philosophical spread of a subtle and broad nature. This is more a work of fiction, a story brilliant and evocative, boundless and implosive, rather than an exhibition of poetic genius.
Reading Dr. Anne Paolucci's translations and mediating on her selections we become acquainted with a world that must have made of her a better human being: one more at peace with the inscrutable layers of truth that envelop our everyday lives. This work is an exemplum of what it means to become a scholar for the love of literature and for it offers a greater insight into reality and a more profound sensibility to truth than any other experience may hold claim to.
If you can't speak Italian well...take this one to the grave with you.
Aside from the inevitable failures a translation is bound to become mired within, this is a wonderful experience and one that shall yield infinite returns and interminable silences beyond the rows and numbers that stand alongside the original Italian.
... Read more

Product Description
Newly awakened interest in Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), arguably the greatest Italian poet since the Renaissance, has resulted in this project to translate a major portion of his works. This volume is the first of four which will encompass the great Canti (in bilingual text), selections from the poet's correspondence, a substantial portion of his enormous intellectual journal, the Zibaldone, and the focus of the present volume, the Operette morali.Originally planned as a set of dialogues in the manner of Lucian, the Operette is a compilation of brief, interrelated works on questions of moral philosphy. By means of numerous characters, and by means of a range of styles, Leopardi grapples with a theory of pleasure, the concepts of fame, the infinite, human happiness, the function of poetry, and other topics. In the poet's own opinion, the Operette represented his major philosophical speculation and ranked just below his Canti. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the text that can both be accessed online and used to create new print copies. This book and thousands of others can be found in the digital collections of the University of Michigan Library. The University Library also understands and values the utility of print, and makes reprints available through its Scholarly Publishing Office. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Invaluable
The translation heretofore unavailable to most scholars and students alike of J.M. Morrison's Leopardi's Canti is finally in print thanks to the efforts of Bibliobazaar, a publishing company devoted to scholarship and readership through its inestimable service of providing hard-to-find and out-of-print works. These, for the most part, are offered at a reasonable price - granted they are in the main subject to no copyright laws, all the more in keeping with Biliobazaar's modus operandi as being that of providing works that are in the public domain and undergoing the process of being digitized. With that in mind, asking for a quality paperback may have been presumptuous. Indeed the reprinting is more of a microfiche put to paper, endowed with the occasional ink smear and a typeset, for the most, heavy and bold. Irrespective of this, J.M. Morrison's translation is impossible to find and arguably the best in the English language (although Townsend's rendition is hard to best). This particular publication was originally made available in 1900 by Gay and Bird, a now defunct book dealership that owed its better days to its editors who sought to offer the best at any cost. It did not bode well beyond the days of the depression, which makes it rather ironic to see it finally back in print at the onset of economic times of a similar strain.

JM Morrison retained Leopardi's form and meter, employing the same intricacies of internal rhymes, and for the most - with success unheralded since or before in the English language - in consonence with the mood that the languor and intensity of the original sought to evoke. The translator uses archaisms when the original calls for these, yet he never comes to slow the nimble agility of the verse by it, nor does the rigidity of the English language demean the original: in this he has no rivals. His translations of L'Infinito and La Ginestra (rendered as The Genista, or the Desert-Flower) deviate from the original structure considerably, but for some reason you come to appreciate the liberties the translator accorded his efforts on grounds that he so admirably renders the tenor, the meaning and the candor of such Leopardi classics. Personally I find this to be an exceptional feat, but must take pains to criticize the unfortunate use of the word 'annoy' as a substitute for noia, often enough adopted as 'ennui' or 'boredom' in other tranlsations. The fact that the word is such a crucial Leopardi catchphrase makes this an undesirable choice, since annoy never quite came to reproduce a similar meaning, and most assuredly fails to connote the sterility that is found by a choice such as ennui, although the chafing effect may be better denoted by annoy. All in all, I did not find this word choice particularly felicitous.

Of Leopardi's 34 Canti only 'Consalvo', 'Palinode' and 'On The Marriage of My Sister Paulina' are omitted, this being an understandable omission by any standards and it does not adulterate the integrity of the entire opus in the least. JM Morrison writes as a poet, and his language placates solecisms, sublimates the emotional thrust and engages in a like manner to the genius of Leopardi's verse. Contemporary students may regret some of the more indolent archaisms, although they are few relatively speaking. Professors of Italian poetry may find its employment in classes undesirable given the fact that the original Italian, as for example in Casale's Leopardi Reader, is missing. However, Bibliobazaar does us a wonderful turn by making this publication available if for no other reason that Leopardi's philosophy and melody comes through in a manner sufficiently akin to the Italian, which is saying more than most can boast of nowadays. One final critique is ill deserved, but I shall proceed to make it public nonetheless. As its cover design this edition places a common Microsoft Vista screensaver. It may have reduced production costs further, but I can't imagine a picture of a contemporary artist of Leopardi, or even De Chirico for that matter, or more to the point a portraiture of Giacomo Leopardi himself as being should inadequate or unfeasible. Ultimately the quality of the translation and the service offered the literary and academic community is of enough merit to offset such cost-efficient improprieties. All in all what matters is that we have this translation back in print and we bid it our welcome and wish it happy returns.

"But wherefore give him life?"
First, I cannot comment on this particular translation, as I read and studied the Canti in Italian - so my 5 stars ought to be taken cum grano salis.

Also, who am I to give stars to Leopardi? In fact, it would be rather silly of me to attempt, here, in a few lines, a short literary criticism of the work of one of the greatest poets in Italian language as well as a giant of human thought. Libraries can be filled with books on this enfant prodige, who as a child would toy with greek, latin and hebrew philology, write tragedies, essays on theology, histories of astronomy - as Italo Calvino puts it, when he writes a poem on the moon, Leopardi knows precisely well what he is talking about - or could forge a Callimachus and fool the world authorities on ancient greek literature. His Zibaldone di Pensieri ("Eggnog of thoughts") anticipates contemporary philosophy from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche to Heidegger - indeed it anticipates the contemporary age; his entire work is like a big bang, and contains in nuce future existentialism, nihilism, ontology. So, I will just rant a little about what of Leopardi speaks to me personally.

Men are not created equal. I hold this truth to be self evident. So did Leopardi. He knew he was not one of the "greggia", not on of the sheep he envied. Some of us are different, as he tells us. There are people that can experience in advance what our kind will explore in the future centuries. And most of them burn, like fuses burn. We watch them fall with an admixture of admiration, horror and awe - as the tragic chorus watches Oedipus.

That is why I do not believe that "Cosmic Pessimism" is a good label for Leopardi. Sure, that would attract a teenager, and indeed at seventeen, I myself could not open his Canti without reading all of them, many times, usually ending up at late night, early morning.

But what is truly universal about Leopardi is his incredible sensitivity for the "being", his "esprit de finesse". He does not "understand" the infinite. He can feel it, as a revelation. In "L'Infinito" he describes - as a real, physical experience - the simplification of the universe to the cosmic equation that brahmanism would write as Brahman=Ataman (without him knowing anything of the Upanishad):

But sitting here, and watching here, in thought,
I create interminable spaces,
greater than human silences, and deepest
quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify.

(...) and I remember the eternal
and the dead seasons, and the living present
and its sound (...)

Shipwreck can be sweet in the sea of the absolute, as it is to drown thoughts in this immensity; but as Leopardi points his eyes into its depths, reality poses him radical questions. At the end, Leopardi answers are notoriously horrific: Nature as a stepmother, and not a good one. Cruelty as at the core of the being. Men, women, children, no more valuable or respected than ants. And life itself the crazy joke of a disturbed mind. Get a taste (and pardon my poor translation):

In travail man is born
and often his birth causes death
Pain and torment he feels
with his earliest breath
and from the first, his parents fondly strive
to console him of being born (...)

We do not have to believe his answers - Nietzsche found different (yet similar) ones, so did Buddha, or Epicure or St. paul... although we certainly cannot dismiss his pessimism by trivializing the personal experience of such an excellent mind, as some mediocre contemporaries have tried to.

But art, as we know, is not "a way to say things", it is a form of knowledge, a revelation for the artist foremost, as well as its transmission to others in the form that is closest to that pristine experience of truth. We read Leopardi to relive the enlightening of his soul, or at least to try. Perhaps at the end, answers are not so important. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Enchanting Fables of Disenchantment
"Leopardi is one of the greatest of poets and prose writers, and like Kleist and Baudelaire, a truly original, devastating sensibility. Nothing is more overdue than a proper edition of Leopardi in English."
-- Susan Sontag

Fiabe che incantano. Melodie filosofiche di una strana saggezza che tradisce i metodi antichi in un dialogo strumentalizzato dal'epicentro del cuore stordito da illusioni intelletuali. Poesia in prosa.

The translation here is adequate, and just as sharp as the earlier rendition by Betram Dobell but not as stellar as the Columbia University Press scarce edition entitled "The Moral Dialogues" where Patrick Creagh's modern version is still the best one available. The above quotation of Sontag is referring to the Creagh translation. ... Read more

Product Description
General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1893Original Publisher: W. ScottSubjects: Literary Criticism / European / ItalianPoetry / Continental EuropeanNotes: This is an OCR reprint of the original rare book. There may be typos or missing text and there are no illustrations.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more