Giacomo Leopardi

[quasimodo1]

Giacomo Leopardi -- Chorus of the Dead --

Only immortal in the world.

Terminus of all things living,

Our nature-- naked as it is--

Comes, Death, to rest in you;

Happy, no, but safe

From the sorrow

Old as time. Deep night keeps

The dark thought of you

From the rambling mind;

Spent, the spirit feels

Its springs of hope and of desire

Dry up; fears and sorrows slip away

And it passes with no pain

Through the long slow vacant

Ages of eternity. {from Leopardi, Selected Poems,

translated by Eamon Grennan, Stanza 1 of 2}

[quasimodo1]

"Leopardi, Collected Poems" some lines from the

introduction by John C. Barnes -- "Leopardi was

born in 1798, the eldest son of an aristocratic family

with its seat in the small, backward provincial town

of Recanati, near Ancona, which was then part of

the Papal States. His mother was an austere,

unfeeling woman with whom he appears to have

had a minimal relationship, but his father, Count

Monaldo, though reactionary, was himself, a man of

letters with a considerable private library, and made

ample provision for his son't education in Latin,

French, and Roman Catholic philosophy by the

employment of clerical (religious) personal tutors.

Giacomo was a child prodigy who by the age of

fourteen had learned all his tutors could teach him

and had already written his first literary

compositions and works of scholarship. The next

seven years were a period of "mad and desperate

study" under his own direction in his father's library:

he taught himself Greek, Hebrew, English, German

and Spanish, and embarked on philological studies

by translating and annotating the classics."

[quasimodo1]

NIGHT SONG OF A NOMADIC SHEPHERD IN ASIA

Moon, moon of silence, what are you doing,

Tell me what you're doing in the sky?

You rise in the evening-time and go

Brooding oveer barren open country,

Then sink to rest. Haven't you had enough

Of traveling those everlasting paths?

Aren't you tired of gazing

Down on these valleys, or can you still

See something in them? A shepherd's life

Is like the life you live:

Rising at first light

He leads his flock over the fields, and sees

Flocks, streams, tracts of grass;

At evening he goes, tired, to his rest:

He never hopes for anything else.

Tell me, what use

Is the shepherd's life to the shepherd

Or yours to you? To what end, tell me.

Are these brief wanderings of mine,

Or your voyage that never ends?



A ragged old man,

Ailing, white-haired, barefoot,

Bent under a heavy load.

Hurries across mountains, through valleys,

Over sharp rocks, deep sands, and briary wastes,

Hurries in wind and rain,

Under blazing sun, in bitter chill,

Hurrying faster; gasping for breath,

Crossing swamps and flooded streams,

Tumbling, stumbling, on he hurries,

No food, no water, not a minute's rest,

All bloodied and torn to bits

Till he reaches his journey's end at last

And the end of all those fierce exertions:

A fearsome, bottomless abyss

Into which he flings himself,

Obliterating everything.

Bright, unspotted moon,

That's human life for you.

{first page of this long poem by Giacomo Leopardi,

translated by Eamon Grennan}

[quasimodo1]

SAPPHO'S LAST SONG Peaceful night, shamefaced light Of the fading moon, and you, star of the morning. As you rise above silent cliff top woods-- How I loved fine sights like these Before learning what fate and the Furies were, But such calm, quiet scenes can now Cheer my hopeless heart no more. I feel, now, such unaccustomed joy Only when dusty southern winds Cleave the clear air and swirl a path Through shivering grass, or thunder rolls Like Jove's great chariot over my head. Splitting the pitch-black air wide open. Now It is stormy weather I love plunging into Along the crags and through deep valleys Seeing terror stricken flocks in scattered flight Or hearing wave after wave go rushing over Crumbled banks the swollen torment's headlong roar. How gorgeous the earth is, drenched with dew And your wide cloak, divine sky but ah, The gods and grim-lipped fate have given Poor Sappho no part of this infinite beauty. A tiresome wretched guest in your Grand, indifferent domain, Nature I lift like an abandoned lover My beggar's heart and beggar's eyes Up to all your lovely forms. The steamy Riverbanks don't smile at me, nor dawn's White light in the sky; bright winged birds Don't sing to me, beechtrees don't greet me With murmuring leaves, and where clear water Runs under the bending willow's shade The stream slides and winds away In scorn from these soiled and slippery feet, Hugging the sweet scented bank as it flees. What offense, what loathsome crime marked me Before I was born, making heaven and the face Of fortune frown as they did? What sin Did I committ as a child--when one can know No wrong at all--that my iron dark thread of life, Lacking all the summer colors of youth, Lay twisted on fate's implacable apindle? Reckless Words fly from your mouth: A hidden purpose Fashions whatever has to happen. Everything is hidden except our pain. We came a forsaken Race crying into the world, and the gods Keep their own counsel. Those hopes and cares Of our early years! God gives to good looks Lasting power amongst men and women Neither high heroic deeds and skill In lyric song or learned poem will shine Through the tattered coat of a body like mine. I shall die. With as poor unworthy cloak cast off My naked soul will seek some refuge In the land of the dead, righting the cruel wrong That chance--blindly parceling out our lives Inflicted. And you for whom I've spent the years In fruitless love--faithful forever, forever bursting In an empty frenzy of unsatisfied desire-- Be happy, if any mortal at all on earth May be happy. From his miser's store Of sweet blessings, god gave me nothing Once my dream of youth and its illusions Withered. Our happiest days are first to fly, Leaving illness, old age, and the icy-handed Shadow of death. And so, of all those hopes And high ambitions, all those dear Enchantments of the heart, only death itself Is left; and this quick, bright spirit of mine To the queen of shadows must be handed over, And to black night, and the speechless shore.

[quasimodo1]

To His Lady



Beloved beauty who inspires
love in me from afar, your face obscured
except when your celestial image
stirs my heart in sleep, or in the fields
where light and nature's laughter shine more lovely—
was it maybe you who blessed
the innocent age called golden,
and do you now, blithe spirit,
fly among men? Or does that miser fate
who hides you from us save you for the future?


No hope of seeing you alive
remains for me now,
except when, naked and alone,
my soul will go down a new street
to its unknown home. Already at the dawn
of my dark, uncertain day
I imagined you a fellow traveler
on this arid ground. But there's no thing
that resembles you on earth. And if someone
had a face like yours, in act and word she'd be,
though something like you, far less beautiful.


In spite of all the suffering
fate decreed for human time,
if there were anyone on earth
who truly loved you as my thought depicts you,
this life for him would be a blessing.
And I see clearly how your love
would lead me still to strive for praise and virtue,
as I used to in my early years.
Though heaven gave no comfort for our troubles,
yet with you mortal life would be
like what in heaven leads to divinity.


In the valleys, where the song
of the weary farmer sounds,
and when I sit and mourn
the illusions of youth fading,
and on the hills where I recall
and grieve for my lost desires
and my life's lost hope, I think of you
and start to shake. If only I, in this
sad age and unhealthy atmosphere,
could keep hold of your noble look; for since the real thing's
missing I must make do with the image.


Whether you are the only one
of the eternal ideas eternal wisdom
refuses to see arrayed in sensible form
to know the pains of mortal life
in transitory spoils,
or if in the supernal spheres another earth
from among unnumbered worlds receives you
and a near star lovelier than the Sun
warms you and you breathe benigner ether,
from here, where years are both ill-starred and brief,
accept this hymn from your unnoticed lover.

[JBI]

Anyone else interested in this guy? He's a giant in Italy, and I think anyone who studies Italian literature in depth has to cover him, but he doesn't seem to get any showing space in the English speaking world, and no translations I have found do his Canti justice.

Is anyone else interested in Leopardi's poetry, and criticism/theory, or should I just let the thread die again?

[stlukesguild]

JBI... I questioned just how important poetry in general was to the group back in the thread "Can Poetry Matter?" noting that most of the poetry threads seem to be kept alive largely through the efforts of Quasimodo and the participation a a limited few participants. I am certainly interested in what you have gleaned from Leopardi... as I take it you have been working on mastering Italian. I have come across few Leopardi translations that moved me as poetry over time... the best book being A Leopardi Reader by Ottavio Mark Casale that interspersed Leopardi's poetry with his prose writings. As I understand it, Leopardi is commonly ranked second only to Dante in the Italian poetic tradition... although considering Cavalcanti, Petrarch, and Montale that may be debatable.

[mortalterror]

JBI... I questioned just how important poetry in general was to the group back in the thread "Can Poetry Matter?" noting that most of the poetry threads seem to be kept alive largely through the efforts of Quasimodo and the participation a a limited few participants. I am certainly interested in what you have gleaned from Leopardi... as I take it you have been working on mastering Italian. I have come across few Leopardi translations that moved me as poetry over time... the best book being A Leopardi Reader by Ottavio Mark Casale that interspersed Leopardi's poetry with his prose writings. As I understand it, Leopardi is commonly ranked second only to Dante in the Italian poetic tradition... although considering Cavalcanti, Petrarch, and Montale that may be debatable.

Have you tried the Eamon Grennan translations? Admittedly there are far too few of them, and he admits to being somewhat loose with the language; but it's one of my favorite books.

[quasimodo1]

To Himself


Now will you rest forever,
My tired heart. Dead is the last
deception,
That I thought eternal. Dead. Well I
feel
In us the sweet illusions,
Nothing but ash, desire burned out.
Rest forever. You have
Trembled enough. Nothing is worth
Thy beats, nor does the earth
deserve
Thy sighs. Bitter and dull
Is life, there is nought else. The
world is clay.
Rest now. Despair
For the last time. To our kind, Fate
Gives but death. Now despise
Yourself, nature, the sinister
Power that secretly commands our
common ruin,
And the infinite vanity of
everything.

[stlukesguild]

Have you tried the Eamon Grennan translations? Admittedly there are far too few of them, and he admits to being somewhat loose with the language; but it's one of my favorite books.

I've just seen it recently and it does look promising. I'll need to add it to my wish list.

[JBI]

I have flipped through A Leopardi Reader, and, though it is one of the best Leopardi books I have come across, it still lacks the scholarship, and style of even 1/10 of the Italian additions I have come across.

While I was there, I picked up a cheap paper-back Garzanti addition of the Canti. That book is 400 pages, with more space dedicated to footnotes, context information, and scholarship than to the actual poetry. These sorts of additions don't seem to exist in the English speaking world for anything but English speaking poetry. I'm hard pressed to even find a complete volume of Leopardi's work, which is a shame. I recently came across a copy of Leopardi's thoughts, which, according to the introduction, had been translated in that edition for the first time. The book was dated 2002, meaning for about 170 years, no one in the English speaking world had any access to Leopardi's final, unpublished writings.

Just compare though, Leopardi to his English equivalents. In terms of influence and significance, his closest counterpart is probably, for their respected languages, Coleridge, as both seem to have enjoyed similar importance. Just imagine not being able to access Coleridge; it's ridiculous.

On other notes - It's good to know that Quasimodo1 is still at large here. It is quite true that these forums, besides sporadic posts of "can you help me find this poem," and "What do you think of these poems." Seems to be almost a one man show. I admit that I, despite my love of poetry, have not posted on these boards nearly as much as I would have liked to, due to other obligations, and the fact that responses here seem limited.

It would be great if we could try to pull back together the poetry book club - I don't know what became of it, as it sort of got pushed to the back of the Yeats forum, and then disappeared. If anyone is really interested in pumping that back to life, send me a PM, because as it is, those sort of threads and clubs seem to breathe for 30 posts, and then just disappear. It would be great to get something like that going, to try and generate a little more exposure for lesser-known, and/or non-English poets.

[stlukesguild]

Well... I should note that you missed out on a good discussion of T.S. Eliot while you were in Italy... but I might suggest if we wish to avoid having any such discussion pushed into the author's forum we might select a poet not on that list... as surely there are many worthy. Any suggestions? Nerval? Montale? Pessoa?

[Jozanny]

I am sympathetic JBI, but also believe translation is more problematic when it comes to poetry. You and luke may draw swords on me, but in this instance, original language is a world of difference, and I am just not fluent enough. I could not retain French after college, my Italian might keep me from being robbed in Tuscany for two minutes, and the little Spanish I've picked up is from my Italian accent. The few foreign language poetry collections I have are mainly late 20th century, with the OL side by side with the English translation, but it really isn't the same reading foreign language poets in English.

[JBI]

Still though, prose just doesn't cut it when you want excellence. Sure there are fantastic prose writers, but none of that can give the same response as reading a poem. You can't carry a novel, or short story around with you the same way you can a poem. As a result, one needs to make the best of what is available.

It is true, as the Italians say, a translators are traitors, but they provide a necessary service; rendering excellence into a tolerable form that can reach out farther. Of course, someone like Leopardi may not translate well, but most 20th century poets who stem out of Whitman (meaning mimic his sort of metaphorical-laden free verse verse over traditional prosody) seem easier to translate (at least to me) as their meanings can be conveyed more perfectly.

I guess though, it will come down to really whose interested. Enjoyment from a translation, and cognitive power can be gained, but lets be honest, how many people on these forums are going to participate if we decide on a work, which is unavailable on this website. How many will even if it is a public domain work.

[Jozanny]

I'd be interested, but I'm wary of reading poetry online, particularly in posts. Poetry needs to be spoken and read, studied to really saturate the bones I think, but I'd be interested.

I have sort of stopped writing, so I might as well not let the anxiety of influence worry me too much, but speaking of which, chase me out of here so I can eat and try to do a wee little work from my broken wheelchair. :) Thanks.

[quasimodo1]

INFINITIVE

I've always loved this lonesome hill
And this hedge that hides
The entire horizon, almost, from sight.
But sitting here in a daydream, I picture
The boundless spaces away out there, silences
Deeper than human silence, an unfathomable hush
In which my heart is hardly a beat
From fear. And hearing the wind
Rush rustling through these bushes,
I pit its speech against infinite silence--
And a notion of eternity floats to mind,
And the dead seasons, and the season
Beating here and now, and the sound of it. So,
In this immensity my thoughts all drown:
And it's easeful to be wrecked in seas like these.

{translated by Eamon Grennan}

[quasimodo1]

THE CALM AFTER THE STORM

The storm has blown over:
I can hear the happy chatter of birds,
And the hen out on the road again
Cacackling her one phrase. Look
How blue breaks over the mountains
From the west, the fields grow clear,
And the river gleams in the valley.
People feel lighthearted, sounds of life
Spill out of every corner,
Things are getting back to normal.
With a piece of work in hand
The craftsman stands
And sings in his own doorway,
So he can see the glistening sky;
Housewives hurry to gather
The first pails of fresh rainwater;
And from street to narrow street
The vegetable-seller again
Raises his daily cry. And here
Comes the sun once more, smiling
On all the houses and the little hills.
Families throw windows wide open,
Open wide their terraces and porches,
And from the high road you can catch
A distant jingle of harness
As the stagecoach sets off again, heaving and creaking.

Every heart is light with joy.
Can our life ever be sweeter
Or more complete
Than at this moment? Will a man
Ever bend with such relish
To his books, get on with his work,
Start something new? Or ever
Think less of his own distress?
Pleasure born of pain;
Insubstantial joy that flows
From the fright that's come and gone,
Which made even him who loathed life
Shiver all over and fear death--
It's this that causes people to shake
In mortal agony, break into cold sweat,
Petrified, speechless, pale as ghosts,
Thinking thunder and lightning and wind and rain
Stirred up on purpose to hurt us.

Gracious nature, these
Are the gifts you grant us,
These the favors you lavish
On mortal men and women. For us,
Pleasure means escape from pain.
Sufferings you scatter
With prodigal hand; unhappiness
Needs no prompting; and that
One touch or two of joy
That like a miracle or nine-day marvel
Springs from sorrow
Is our rich reward. Mankind,
Darling of the gods! Happy to find
Some breathing space
Between griefs; and truly blest
If all your ills are cured by death.

{Giacomo Leopardi, 1778-1837, translated by Eamon Grennan}

[quasimodo1]

From Selected Poems
(translated by Eamon Grennan)

TO SILVIA

Silvia, do you still remember
The time in your brief life here
When beauty brightened
Your eyes and your shy smile,
And you stood in pensive joy on the brink
Of becoming a young woman?

All day the hushed rooms
And the roads around the house
Rang with your singing
As you bent to the spinning wheel,
Happily adrift in your hazy
Dreams of the future. Day
After day you spent like that,
All the fragrant month of May.

Sometimes, getting up
From the books I loved
And those sweat-stained pages
Where I spent the best of my youth,
I'd lean from the terrace of my father's house
Toward the sound of your voice
And the quick click of your hands
At the heavy loom. Wonder-struck, I'd stare
Up at the cloudless blue of the sky
Out at the kitchen gardens and the roads
That shone like gold, and off there
To the mountains and there, to the distant sea.
No human tongue could tell
The feelings beating in my heart.

What tender thoughts we had,
What hopes, what hearts, Silvia!
How fate and human life
Looked then! Now
When I think of all that hope
I'm bitterly stricken,
Beyond consolation, and begin
Lamenting again my own misfortunes.
Ah, nature, nature, why
Can you never make good
Your promises? Why
Must you so deceive your own children?

Before winter had withered the grass,
You were dying, dear girl,
Struck and cut down by blind disease.
And you didn't see your years
Break into blossom, nor ever felt
Your heart melt
Under honeyed praise of your jet-black tresses
Or the shy enamored light in your eyes.
And never did your friends spend Sundays
Whispering with you, all about love.

And soon, too, my own fond hopes
Withered and died: my youth too,
The fates cut off. Ah,
Alas how you've faded,
My tearstained hope, beloved
Comrade of those spring days!
Is this the world we imagined? These
The pleasures, love, adventures
We two together talked and talked of?
Is this what it means to be born human?
At the very first touch of things as they are
You shriveled, poor thing.
And with raised hand pointed away
To the cold figure of death
And an unmarked grave.
{Giacomo Leopardi, 1798-1837}

[quasimodo1]

Giacomo Leopardi

Sunday, September 14, 2008
3:58 PM

From Selected Poems
(translated by Eamon Grennan

TO HIMSELF

Now you will rest, tired heart, forever. Finished
Is your last fantasy, which I felt sure
Would endure forever. It's finished. I know in my bones
That hope and even desire are cold
For any further fond illusions.
Stay easy forever. You've been
Throbbing long enough. Nothing is worth
This beating and beating; the earth
Doesn't deserve a sigh. Life is nothing
But blankness of spirit, a bitter taste, and the world
Mud. Now rest in peace. Despair
For the last time. Fate gave our kind
No gift but death. Cast a cold eye now
On yourself, on nature, on that hideous hidden force
That drives all things to their destruction,
And the infinite ALL IS VANITY of it all.

[JBI]

Hmm, does your edition mention if that line All is Vanity is an allusion, or added by the translator as an allusion?

[quasimodo1]

JBI: This translator takes more liberties than most. I should have when copying to file...hyphenated All-is-vanity. I'm not sure that's an allusion. If not, what figure of rhetoric is it? hmm

[quasimodo1]

The line in Italian: "E l'infinita vanita' del tutto."

[JBI]

I think the translator is using it as an English allusion, but the Italian doesn't seem to correspond with Ecclesiastics.

[quasimodo1]

JBI: Let me claim ignorance here...are you saying there is a Ecclesiastes/bible reference here?

[JBI]

Chapter 1: 2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity - the phrase all is vanity is quite often quoted, and the original Italian doesn't correspond with it too much, making it seem like the translator purposely dropped it, as an allusion.

[quasimodo1]

Thanks for that, JBI, even though I had many years in religious training and related study, this one was new to me. Didn't I hear that you were doing some Italian study in the continent?

[JBI]

Yeah, and now in University - though my reading is at a highly satisfactory level.

[quasimodo1]

From Leopardi, Selected Poems
(translated by Eamon Grennan)

THE SETTING MOON

As on a lonesome night
Over silvered fields and streams
Where a light breeze rustles
And distant shadows conjure
A thousand will-o'-the-wisps
And phantom shapes
Among the unruffled waves, among
Trees and hedges, hills and houses,
The sailing moon-- reaching
The very rim of the sky-- sinks
Behind the Alps or Appenines,
Or into the endless heaving
Of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the world
Grows dim, shadows disappear,
A seamless dark descends
On mountains and valleys, the night
Goes blind, and the wagon-driver
Sings a mournful goodbye
To the last of the fleeting light
That led him safely on; so

Youth fades, and even so
It takes its leave
Of the life of man. The phantoms
And shadows of cherished fancies
Take flight, and future hopes--
Which shore our mortal nature up--
Grow dim. Life remains
Forlorn, bereft of light. Squinting
Into the thickened air, in vain
The baffled traveler strains
To see any purpose or any end
To the long road lying before him,
And sees that he himself and this
Human dwelling-place, the earth,
Are truly strange to one another.

To the gods our wretched human lot
Would seem too trouble-free, too happy,
If youth with its single grain of joy
For every hundredweight of sorrow
Could last a lifetime.
Too lenient that decree
That sentences every animal to die,
Were half the journey of their life
Not worse than dreaded death itself. The gods,
Whose minds remain forever young,
Aptly invented old age
As the worst of evils, old age,
In which desire should be undiminished,
Hope quenched, and springs of pleasure
All dried up, aches and pains
Increasing ever,
Nothing left in life to savor.

You little hills and sandy shores,
Though the brightness in the western sky
That silvered over the stole of night
Is gone, you'll not be left
Orphans long: soon you'll see
The eastern sky grow bright again
And dawn coming: soon the sun
Will fling his fierce refulgent beams
Abroad, flooding you and all the fields of air
With light, torrents of light. But once
Youth with its beauty is gone
No sunshine brightens the life of man,
There is no other dawn. His life remains
Bereft forever; and to lead us into
The night that casts its shadow
Over life's other seasons,
The gods have made
As signpost, terminus, the grave.

{the lines of verse above definitely do not reflect the views of this poster}