I sit by night, and see the distant stars
High in the clear blue sky
Flame down upon this melancholy waste,
And see them mirrored by
The distant sea, till all this universe
Sparkles throughout its limpid emptiness.
    (from 'The Broom or The Flower of the Desert')

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) was the greatest Italian poet after Petrarch and one of the great prose writers of the nineteenth century. Caught between devotion to the classical past and a sense of the impoverished present, Leopardi rejected both the Catholicism of his childhood and Enlightenment optimism. In his world, all that we love and value is illusory, and therefore to be loved the more. His existential resolve makes him the most compelling of Italian poets.

Here is the essential introduction to the poems. J.G. Nicholls provides a translation of the complete Canti, explanatory notes, and a selection of Leopardi's prose, keyed to related poems. Further background is provided by Nicholls's introduction and a brief biography woven from Leopardi's own words.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

CANTI

I To Italy

II On the Proposed Monument to Dante in Florence

III To Angelo Mai on the Occasion of his Discovery of some Books of Cicero's De Re Publica

IV For the Wedding of his Sister Paolina

V To a Victor in the Games

VI Brutus

VII To Spring or Of the Ancient Fables

VIII Hymm to the Patriarchs or Of the Beginnings of the Human Race

IX Sappho's Last Song

X First Love

XI The Solitary Thrush

XII The Infinite

XIII The Evening of the Holiday

XIV To the Moon

XV The Dream

XVI The Solitary Life

XVII Consalvo

XVIII To his Lady

XIX To Count Carlo Pepoli

XX The Revival

XXI To Silvia

XXII Remembrances

XXIII NIght Song of a Wandering Shepherd of Asia

XXIV The Calm after the Storm

XXV the Village Saturday

XXVI The Dominant Thought

XXVII Love and Death

XXVIII To Himself

XXIX Aspasia

XXX Upon a Bas-relief on an Ancient Tomb showing a Daed Girl in the Act of Departing and Taking Leave of her Family

XXXI On the Likeness of a Beautiful Lady Carved upon her Tomb

XXXII Palinode to the Marchese Gino Capponi

XXXIII The Setting of the Moon

XXXIV The Broom or The Flower of the Desert

XXXV Imitation

XXXVI Jeu d'Esprit

XXXVII Fragment (Hear me, Melissus...)

XXXVIII Fragment ( Still walking up and down...)

XXXIX Fragment (The ray of daylight...)

XL Fragments: Fron the Greek of Semonides

XLI Fragments: From the Same

GIACOMO LEOPARDI 1798-1837