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It reminded me of the Romantics too - its vision of time which I've picked up before in Shelley.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
I thought it was perhaps less despairing, more accepting - after all it is a return to the eternal - a vision of divinity, although the fear is acknowledged.
Just received my copy with Eamon Grennan's translation. Some of the poems I read, (late last night) were very enjoyable to read out loud. I loved Leopardi's imagery of nature, but then the poems all seemed to turn dark and sad. What started out as a celebration of nature, then turned depressive. I wonder if anyone else felt that. I need help with interpretations,that's why I wanted to participate in these discussions, so if I'm totally offbase, please let me know.
Neely, My Eamon Grennan translation starts like this.
Infinitive
I've always loved this lonesome hill...
I have to admit that I like this translation better than the one you cited, but you can only go by the edition you have.
Happy Reading! Everybody
Hi, yes you can only go by the translations you have got, but then again if other translations (and the original of course) bring other thoughts to the table then I am more than happy with that - even if I have to change my thinking slightly because of it, it's not a problem, it's all good fun. :)
Yes I wouldn't disagree with you at all, it's just that I took the celebration of nature not to be celebrating nature for its own sake, as it were, as say Wordsworth clearly does, but in celebrating nature only because it helps to block out his inner thoughts and feelings (which are certainly dark and depressive). In other words my reading is that "I've always loved this lonesome hill" not because he particularly loves the hill, but because the views present the infinite which helps to block out his depressive thoughts. Maybe I am a little clouded in my judgment to the extent of his negative feelings (as Paulclem says he found it less despairing than me) because of reading some of his personal musing in such works as his Zibaldone, which seems to be a sort of diary:Quote:
I loved Leopardi's imagery of nature, but then the poems all seemed to turn dark and sad. What started out as a celebration of nature, then turned depressive.
Nowadays I no longer envy the foolish or the wise, the great or the small, the weak or the powerful. I envy the dead, and only with them would I change places. Every pleasing fancy, every thought of the future which I happen to have in my solitude, and with which I pass the time, is concerned with death, and cannot go beyond it. Nor is the desire troubled any more, as it used to be, by the memory of the dream of my youth, and the thought of having lived in vain. If I obtain death, I shall die as peaceful and contented, as if I had never hoped for or desired anything else in the world. This is the only blessing which can reconcile me with destiny. If I were offered on the one hand the fortune and fame of Caesar or of Alexander, free from any blemish, and on the other hand to die today, and if I had to choose, I would say, die today, and I would not need any time to make up my mind.
Death is not an ill: because it frees man from all ills, and together with the good things it takes away the desire for them. Old age is the greatest of all ills; because it deprives man of all pleasures, leaving him only the appetite for them; and it brings with itself all suffering. Nevertheless men fear death, and desire old age.
Not individuals only, but the human race was and always will be inevitably unhappy. Not the human race only, but all the animals. Not the animals only, but all other beings in their own way. Not just the individuals, but the species, the races, the kingdoms, the spheres, the systems, the universes. :party:
So with this in mind to some degree, when I am reading like in the poem above of the narrator's thoughts, I am thinking in terms of things like these. This is why I ultimately see the poem as dark because nature or the infinite can only provide a temporary break from such thoughts. Likewise though, this is just an initial thought and one from which I am not totally unmovable, though often I that that initial thoughts and gut reactions should always be harboured to some extent.
Happy reading!! :)
Having read some of his other shorter poems from the anthology now, I can see that he is a pretty depressed individual. It was his later poems that were more depressing. Perhaps he'd had enough by then. I've got more to read though. Infinity seems light compared to the ones about death.
Hey mine just came in the mail too, just moments ago!! :banana:
I have to agree, the Grennan translation comes across more poetic, and though my Italian is not the best, it rings pretty accurately in terms of meaning. It's a short poem. Let me copy the Grennan translation:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynne50
I know some people have said how this reminds them of the Romantics, but I'm not sure i see the same thing. This is the only one I've read so far, so I can't speak from an intertextual perspective, I can only address from this short poem. The Romantics for the most part see a spirituality in nature, a mystery tending toward the numinous. Here I get the feeling that there is no mystery, no spirituality, no anything but death in nature. I can't say that this is a statement of atheism (though it could be); I'm saying that nature does not seem to contain substenance. Tintern Abbey nourished Wordsworth; there's no noursihment here.Quote:
Infinitive
(trans Grennan)
I've always loved this lonesome hill
And this hedge that hides
The entire horizon, almost, from sight.
But sitting here in 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 my 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.
What I find incredibly interesting, though I don't have a reason for why, but the title of the poem is not "Infinity" but "Infinitive." I had to check the Italian to make sure that was correct. The title isn't talking about eternity, which is the subject of the poem, but a grammatical part of speech. And yet "infinitve" has as a root part of the word that wouold suggest infinity, and so there's a sort of pun there. I'm not sure what to make of it.
Lynne, if you're looking to improve your reading of poetry, here's a few things you might want to do. After absorbing the poem, break up the poem into natural segments, and by natural segments i mean kernals of thought. Here's how I would segment the poem:
Part 1:
I've always loved this lonesome hill
And this hedge that hides
The entire horizon, almost, from sight.
Part 2:
But sitting here in 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--
Part 3
And a notion of eternity floats to my 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;
Part 4
And it's easeful to be wrecked in seas like these.
The next thing is to identify the kernal of though in each part.
Part 1: A description of a place, and how it gives him pleasure.
Part 2: "But" signifies contrast, and so the daydream exercise is in contrast to the pleasurable little hill. So what's the contrast? Pleasure versus fear, finite spot and moment versus boundless space.
Part 3: The boundless space is developed to an abstract thought, "eternity" and his relationship with it - death, overwhelming powerlessness to it.
Part 4: Closure, the death and powerlessness actually alleviates the fear.
Of course there's more to it than just the development. Now you can start looking at the various phrasings, images, and poetic devices and see what those suggest. I'm sure there will be more to discuss. I'll let others jump in here.
Great, thanks for putting the Grennan translation up. Yes, I think I’d have to agree, I like his version more than the Nichols one, it just seems a little tighter and more 'poetic' though which one is closer to the original I wouldn’t claim to know.
I think that you may have misread my connection to the Wordsworth piece though (or I didn’t express my meaning very well) because I would agree there is very little nourishment to be found in nature in this poem, there is no love of nature for nature’s sake. Instead nature seems to function primarily to block out the inner feelings of the narrator in the vastness it presents.
I don’t get what you mean with Infinity/infinitive, do you mean that the translation of the poem’s title is a little odd from the original?
I'm heading off to lunch in few minutes so I don't have very much time to write, but I wanted to comment on the Romanticism connection before there's too many posts to respond to all of them.
While I agree that there are some differences between "The Infinite" and "Tintern Abbey," I don't think that means that the poem isn't Romantic. I actually wanted to start with this poem because I thought it is Romantic, and it would be easy to peg. Discussing infinity and how it interacts with the finite is one of the most common things Romantic poets do. From Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre to Shelley's "Mount Blanc" and Coleridge's "Aeolian Harp," the Romantics were obsessed with this idea. In fact, one of the main critical works on the Romantic period is subtitled The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite. While it's true that in "Tintern Abbey" the poet find "substenance" or "noursihment" in nature, that's not the case for all Romantic poets at all time. Take "Mount Blanc." The mountain is terrible, and it crushes the imagination. It represents the weight of things on the mind. Shelley writes toward the end of the poem:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
The mountain represents the strength of things here, not the infinite dome of thought. This is similar to the Aeolian Harp:Quote:
The secret strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
Again, nature is filter of "harps" that strain the pure "intellectual breeze." There's no talk of "substenance" or "noursihment" in these lines. It's about how the infinite is colored, changed, resisted by finite nature.Quote:
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of All?
I'll write more about this later, but I'm running out of time now.
Actually, i would say that it's mixed on this translation. I think the Grennan seems more accurate with this: "an unfathomable hush/In which my heart is hardly a beat/From fear" as opposed to the Nichols "so much that almost/My heart fills up with fear." But I think the Nichols is more accurate in the last line with "delight" versus the Grennan's "easeful." At least according to my poor Italian. Perhaps JBI can weigh in on this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
I only skimmed the previous number of posts. I don't know if it was you or someone else.Quote:
I think that you may have misread my connection to the Wordsworth piece though (or I didn’t express my meaning very well) because I would agree there is very little nourishment to be found in nature in this poem, there is no love of nature for nature’s sake. Instead nature seems to function primarily to block out the inner feelings of the narrator in the vastness it presents.
From M-W:Quote:
I don’t get what you mean with Infinity/infinitive, do you mean that the translation of the poem’s title is a little odd from the original?
The title is named after a verb form. Isn't that odd? The poem is about infinity and it's titled, "Infinitive."Quote:
Main Entry: 2infinitive
Function: noun
Date: 1530
: a verb form normally identical in English with the first person singular that performs some functions of a noun and at the same time displays some characteristics of a verb and that is used with to (as in “I asked him to go”) except with auxiliary and various other verbs (as in “no one saw him leave”)
I see your point Quark. Yes the wind through the bushes is similar to the Aeolian Harp metaphor, but with Leopardi, nothing the wind is limited in comparison the the scope of what it's set against, the infinte space. In fact he creates a direct compariosn: "pit its [the wind] speech against infinite silence." I think the key to this is evaluating the silence. There is a dichotomy. The wind is earthly, and the vastness of the horizon brings in another dimension, far reaching. The vastness of the horzon and boundless space is slient, "silences,/Deeper than human silence, an unfathomable hush" and that silence is what brings fear. And then there is the mentioning of dead seasons and the immensity that "drowns." It's only one small poem, and the rest will dictate to how similar or different Leopardi is from the Romantics, but i certainly see a distinction so far.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
In the Grennan edition I have, the title of the poem is Infinitive Not sure why Grennan used that instead of Infinity.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
Virgil Thank you so much for helping me with the interpretations. I do try to read poems out loud, and only pause slightly at commas and then fully stop at periods, so as to get the poet's full thought.
I am curious about the word easeful. Is there such a word? It's kind of hard to grasp exactly what is meant by it.
Yes, easeful is a word:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynne50
That last line is apparently famous because when I searched it, I came up with a bunch of Italian blogs with that name.I can see how easeful might be the better word, but to me "dolce" which directly means sweet could be better translated as "delight" as in the Nichols translation. But "easeful" could be more accurate if there is some complex connotation to the last line that my poor Italian can't pick up.Quote:
ease·ful /ˈizfəl/ Show Spelled[eez-fuhl]
–adjective
comfortable; quiet; peaceful; restful.
Origin:
1325–75; ME eisefull. See ease, -ful
—Related forms
ease·ful·ly, adverb
ease·ful·ness, noun
Oh you're rigth about the Nichols. No wonder Neely was confused with what i was saying. The Italian is "L'Infinito" which could go both ways I guess.Quote:
In the Grennan edition I have, the title of the poem is Infinitive Not sure why Grennan used that instead of Infinity.
I just checked: Infinitive does translate to l'infinito in Italian. So that is a major descrepency in the translations between Nichols and Grennan.
Also I found a youtube video where this poem is spoken in Italian. Really nice, and the voice sounds like my grandfather. :lol: Here, it's a real treat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyN4PN1WXWk
In this poem we get a sense of Leopardi's misanthropy, or at least his belief in the insignificance of humanity in the face of natural forces - at least in this poem perhaps not natural forces, but cold, quiet eternity (time).
"[His] thought is drowned" in the ocean of time - that is the weight of the seasons past and the seasons present. His minuscule little thought is nothing in the immensity of eternity. The poet takes a particular delight in this - as he will in later poems.
Boy, I just recently bought a new Merriam Webster dictionary. I guess I should use it, huh? What a dummy!Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Lynne, they have a web site. Here: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary.htm.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynne50
I also find this extremely helpful as a dictionary and a thesaurus: http://thesaurus.com/
Plus if you use Yahoo, you can just type a word in and it will send you to all sorts of dictionaries.
One thing I thought about his relationship to the Romantics was the meditative element, such as you find in Wordsworth. It is clearly an inner appreciation of the infinite, as the hedgerow obscures the horizon:
To me this lonely hill was always precious
And this hedgerow also , where so wide a stretch
Of the extreme horizon's out of sight.
It's lonely and enclosed alowing his mind to perceive the infinite beyond, which seems counter intuitive, as you would think the infinite more appreciable with a good view of a distant horizon.
I think he answers this with his:
"more than human silences"
which suggests a higher prescence - God? - of which there is fear:
...almost
My heart fills up with fear.
He seems to set up paradoxes in order to perceive this infinite with the solitary enclosed hill to view infinity, infinite silence and the wind rustling, the eternal and the dead seasons.
Do the paradoxes cause his thoughts to drown, and is this why this kind of drowning is tinged with fear, but also a delight?
That's superb. My daughter wants to learn Italian for her GCSE options 14-16 year studies. I wonder if she'll be interested - possibly, though she treats me with a practiced scorn. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
hill, hedge, horizon, daydream, spaces, silence, heart, wind, bushes, speech, eternity, seasons, sound, immensity, seas
The wind rustling through the bushes is obviously his poetry, just as the beat of the season represents the pulse of his heart. He pits sound versus silence, life versus death, a season juxtaposed against eternity. Thus, that which is living makes a temporary sound. Making poetry an expression of his life, however brief. It's interesting that art is the opposite of immortality in this poem. Leopardi's work, his expressions, are temperal like the passing seasons. He does not seek to live through them.
The hill is definitely a source of shelter, a place he can hide from the larger ie threatening aspects of life, symbolised by the horizon. The horizon is a terminus, a point beyond which we cannot see. It stretches out in either direction forever, like the uncertain state we experience before life and after death. Nature is not a solace to Leopardi, as the seas and large spaces are what he's hiding from by the small secluded hedge. But the hill with it's containing hedge is positive. I wonder if he had read Edmund Burke's "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful". Burke hypothesizes that the small, balanced, polished, and non-threatening is beautiful whereas much of the large and imposing odd shaped structures of nature impose a sense of sublime awe on viewers.
I notice the words "lonesome" and "hides" in the first two lines. He goes to the hill alone, retreating from society. Could the vast seas represent people, the turmoil they cause his soul, and his desire to be alone in his deformity? But he cannot hide from himself. There are two distinct spaces in the poem. The setting starts externally on the hill and moves into his mind on the fourth line. "But sitting here in a daydream... in this immensity my thoughts all drown." All the external stimulae are peaceful. What's internal is where all of Leopardi's problems lie. He mentions that he loves the hill, but does he love it because it keeps him safe, or because it allows him to daydream?
Could the hill and the hedge represent another state of mind? One where he is neither thinking about the future nor the past? "It's easeful to be wrecked in seas like these." Is he saying that he would rather contemplate the big vital topics, that he enjoys the "fear" and excitement that come from contemplating his own demise more than tranquility and lack of thought?
Just a very quick post before bed...
Yes when Quark mentioned Shelley and “Mount Blanc” I thought of the sublime, but I think it operates differently here for it is not about being in awe of nature or questioning existence but simply using nature as a means of peace.
I still read it as the latter. He loves the hill, not for the hill’s sake, but because the infinity of the scope of nature blocks out his internal woe. :as-sleep:Quote:
What's internal is where all of Leopardi's problems lie. He mentions that he loves the hill, but does he love it because it keeps him safe, or because it allows him to daydream?
I don't know if the season is juxtaposed against eternity mortal. The season I think corresponds with the infinite, as the wind flows through bringing about the cyclical change - it is all contrasted against his limited life, and own decay. The image of the hill could mean anything, but I like to think of it as the place of vision, rather than of comfort, in that he looks out at all that is eternal bellow him, and contrasts its cyclical infinity with his limitation.
The hill is definitely a source of shelter, a place he can hide from the larger ie threatening aspects of life, symbolised by the horizon. The horizon is a terminus, a point beyond which we cannot see. It stretches out in either direction forever, like the uncertain state we experience before life and after death.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
I was just thinking about this - isn't there the idea that directly perceiving "God" would result in death? I can't remember where i read it, but Moses talking to the burning bush is an example.
So the hill would allow an inner view, but not a direct view of the far horizon, and is protective of him behind the hedge.
Given what we know about Leopardi, you're probably right that the poem expresses some unwillingness or inability to deal with harsh reality. No doubt Leopardi harbored some pretty bleak ideas. One could interpret the poet's meditations in "Infinitive" or "Infinite" as a defense mechanism--a big diversion from ugly thoughts. After all, when we say we're going to go "drown" our thoughts, it's usually not a terribly happy time in our lives.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
Of course, I don't think we should write off the poem as just a distraction for the poet, though. There is something genuinely important to the poet's meditation here. It isn't just a negation of Leopardi's dark thoughts. On the hill, the poet becomes aware of the difference and similarities between past and present, intellectual and material, infinite and finite. These are important ideas to a Romantic poet. I think Leopardi is trying to show that there's something actually fruitful about comparing these opposing ideas. It's not just a mental diversion. Although, it might be that, too.
Well it sounds like many posters have a pretty dark take on "Infinity." I'm with you, though. The poem rings a little happier for me than many of his other ones.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
Those are helpful divisions. I might move "And hearing the wind/ Rush rustling through these bushes,/ I pit its speech against infinite silence" into the third part, though, since it's part of the comparison between nature and the infinite. It's not really part of the daydream of the infinite. Those lines kick off the juxtaposition that happens in part three.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Edit:
I'm laughing now because I see that there's ten new posts already posted in the time it took me to respond to just three posts. I'm never going to catch up.
I must say that this is what I'm after from a poetry thread.
And so to bed.
:D
Yes, with words like "wind," "speech," and "sound" there's clearly a reference to poetry itself. This isn't just a mental exercise. It's a verbal one, as well, and Leopardi is commenting on inspiration, composition, and reception. To say that the wind through the bushes is plaintive or reminds him of death, is to say that the poetry is, too. To say that the wind comes from an infinite realm beyond the natural and material, is to say that his inspiration is also. And, to say that's "easeful" or "sweet" to be shipwrecked on these meditations, is to say that reading this poem is "sweet" and "easeful." There's a lot going on this poem. It's not just daydreaming about infinity, nor is just trying to distract oneself from unpleasant thoughts. It's also a commentary on poetry and art.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I think there's some concern that poetry is made of ephemeral stuff. But, at the same time, I think Leopardi is arguing that there's also something of the infinite and permanent, as well. Remember, the wind is omnipresent: it exists in the infinite range beyond as well as the hill. It only makes noise on the hill because there's something of substance for it to create a sound. This is similar to the Aeolian Harp analogy that many Romantic poets use. The harp represents the material and temporal world, and, yes, it is the thing that creates poetry. But, in order to operate it, you need wind--which represents the infinite. I think Leopardi is espousing something like that. That is, a poetry that is a collaboration of finite and infinite.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Neely has been pitching this idea all day and part of yesterday, and, while there's definitely something to it, I don't think it completely gets what's going on the poem. We can think of the hill, hedge, and horizon in psychological terms. It would look something like this if we did:Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
The hill: consciousness, the ego, thought
The hedge: a defense mechanism to keep out unpleasant realities that might threaten our life on the hill
The horizon: unfiltered reality, what we know
I agree with this reading up to a point. Yes, Leopardi had a dark worldview at times, and the hill seems like an escape from it (Paulem already pointed out how the poem is lighter than Leopardi's others). But, at the same time, we have acknowledge that there's something of value going on in the meditation itself. I think we can interpret the hill, hedge, and horizon in another way which saves the meditation. These relate to more than just psychological states. They also relate to platonic conceptions of consciousness. The hedge is there not just to block unpleasant thoughts. It's there because the material world conceal the ideal world. The horizon is like a platonic sun and the hill is a place where the poet can see both the shadows on the wall and the sun itself. I think that this platonic reading of the poem is present alongside the psychological reading.
If Leopardi did, he certainly problematizes it in this poem. He slips "easeful" into an "immensity" here--something I don't think Burke would have considered possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Yeah, we haven't talked about the social aspect of this poem. I'm not going to start in on yet, though, until things calm down a little on the thread. Introducing a new topic doesn't seem like a smart thing to do right now.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
The end is a little ambiguous. We don't know whether he's thinking about both future and past or neither. I tend to think that neither is exclusively taking up his attention, but rather that he's going back and forth between the two. That interplay between opposing ideas creates the immensity that he wants drown his thoughts into.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
When it says the "season/ beating here and now" that sounds like something juxtaposed with eternity, as does "dead seasons." The seasons seem to be able to decay just like the speaker.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
While I can see the hill as a shelter, I have to agree with JBI that it probably more of a place of vision. It's lonely, yes, but it's also a high place that for vision. If it were a hole, or something like that, it might be easier to think of this as just a shelter. One doesn't seek shelter on peaks, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
But you aren't considering what a fine classical scholar he was, and the education he received. A season, in this poem, is the space of a human life. Past seasons are the lives of his ancestors or past poets.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
I don't see the wind as being a part of the infinite. When I see those lines about the wind, I think of the old testament; where God is a breath of wind, a spoken word, and the breathe is life. It stirs the leaves and bushes. It makes a sound. Death has no motion in this poem, it's all stillness and silence. Noise, and speech are affirmations of life. That's why I think the wind represents his poetry. Writing isn't about longevity but existence itself, like breathing. At the same time, he knows that his writing is useless, when weighed in the balance, just as he knows he's going to die.Quote:
And the dead seasons, and the season
Beating here and now, and the sound of it.
He's not looking out because there is nothing to look out at. His view is blocked by the hedge. This is a poem about an internal journey and a man surrendering his ego to the void.
I can get behind that thought. But what's really bothering me is that if we are agreed that the wind is his poetry, then what are the leaves and bushes it's shaking? For that matter, what is the hedge?Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
You make a good point about the hill being exposed.
It's language. It's the material of the book. It's everything that limits us from understanding directly one-mind-to-another what Leopardi is thinking and feeling. Since the Romantic conception of poetry is "a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," the ideal art would be telepathic one. But, since humans are dumb to what others are feeling, we need material and linguistic expressions. Immaterial wind coming through a material object (like a hedge or harp) is a common Romantic trope for this process. I think Leopardi is working off this playbook.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Strange to note though that at this point in his career he was heavily rooted in Classicism over Romanticism that was popping up, and only really got associated with Romanticism a little later after he turned much, much darker.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
Outstanding find, that youtube recitation Virgil... in case anyone ever doubted the superior musicality of Italian over English. (Leopardi might even have approved the soundtrack?) Barnes, in the introduction, makes a clear statement about "Infinitive"... {But it is with "Infinitive" that Leopardi fully discovers
his own voice, setting aside public themes and focusing on objects and landscapes which take on far-reaching
emotional resonances. "Infinitive" is the fiirst of a group of five poems composed between 1819 and 1821
(the first five in this selection), which Leopardi called "idylls." Here evocation and memory come to the
fore, while grief at the dashing of cherished hopes and the inexorable passing of time is sublimated in calm
contemplation of an immense, all-embracing nature. It was only later that Leopardi came to identify nature
itself as the prime cause of human unhappiness, a view that underlies his "great idylls" of 1829-30 (from
"The Solitary Thrush" to "Night Song of a Nomadic Shepard in Asia"). these poems evince a sense of universal
pain and a compassion that extends to all living people.}
Yes, Paul. That is the starting point, but the "But" on the very next line delineates a strong contrast, and that contrast is what is developed for the rest of the poem, except perhpas for that last line. Does that last line bring him back to the emotions on the hill? If one sees that last line in that way, then one could make an argument of Romanticism for the poem. If one looks at that last line as concluding the emotions of the immensity and drowning,as I think I do, then then it strikes me as different from Romanticism. Like I said before, there is no nourishment or spirituality in nature, and whatever easeful or delight he's getting seems to be some morbid attraction to death.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
Could be. I guess it's too short a poem to really conclude much on the God question. I had read it as a sort of atheism ("infinite silence"), but I think you've got a good argument there on the possiblity of God. Here's where an intertextual check with his other works might persuade us one way or the other.Quote:
which suggests a higher prescence - God? - of which there is fear:
...almost
My heart fills up with fear.
He seems to set up paradoxes in order to perceive this infinite with the solitary enclosed hill to view infinity, infinite silence and the wind rustling, the eternal and the dead seasons.
Do the paradoxes cause his thoughts to drown, and is this why this kind of drowning is tinged with fear, but also a delight?
Oh that's great. I hope she enjoys it. But she sounds like a typical teenager. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
I don't know if that's obvious, but it is within the realm of possibility. I don't read those words as symbolic or metaphoric. It just seems like he's describing the wind. But I grant you, we could possibly stretch it to suggest that.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I think those are really good observations. I pretty much agree with you.Quote:
He pits sound versus silence, life versus death, a season juxtaposed against eternity. Thus, that which is living makes a temporary sound. Making poetry an expression of his life, however brief. It's interesting that art is the opposite of immortality in this poem. Leopardi's work, his expressions, are temperal like the passing seasons. He does not seek to live through them.
The horizon is threatening but I think you're stretching the symbolism too far. There's no suggestion that the nartrator is threatened by "aspects of life." I do agree that nature is no solace.Quote:
The hill is definitely a source of shelter, a place he can hide from the larger ie threatening aspects of life, symbolised by the horizon. The horizon is a terminus, a point beyond which we cannot see. It stretches out in either direction forever, like the uncertain state we experience before life and after death. Nature is not a solace to Leopardi, as the seas and large spaces are what he's hiding from by the small secluded hedge. But the hill with it's containing hedge is positive.
I pretty much agree with everything there except the vast seas representing people thought. Again, I think you're stretching the symbolism beyond what is there. I like the way you distiguish the internal and the external.Quote:
I notice the words "lonesome" and "hides" in the first two lines. He goes to the hill alone, retreating from society. Could the vast seas represent people, the turmoil they cause his soul, and his desire to be alone in his deformity? But he cannot hide from himself. There are two distinct spaces in the poem. The setting starts externally on the hill and moves into his mind on the fourth line. "But sitting here in a daydream... in this immensity my thoughts all drown." All the external stimulae are peaceful. What's internal is where all of Leopardi's problems lie. He mentions that he loves the hill, but does he love it because it keeps him safe, or because it allows him to daydream?
Hmm, that's a possibility. I could go along with that reading, though I'm reading the poem more literally than you are. I think he feels insiginficant set against the infinity of the horizon and the sea.Quote:
Could the hill and the hedge represent another state of mind? One where he is neither thinking about the future nor the past? "It's easeful to be wrecked in seas like these." Is he saying that he would rather contemplate the big vital topics, that he enjoys the "fear" and excitement that come from contemplating his own demise more than tranquility and lack of thought?
While the wind is certainl tied to the earthly elements in the poem, including the the poet's voice, I still think it's a stretch to say the wind represents his poetry. Such a symbolic, almost allegorical, reading of the poem, leads you into the specious, like trying to find symbols for everything.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
You're not convincing. The deep silence of the infinity overwhelms his personal feelings. There is a difference here from the Romantics.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
I don't know much about his life and ideas, but I sense that's true.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Absolutely. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by quasimodo1
I see how "Infinitive" as a grammatical word could suggest his poetic voice, but still the title eludes me. There has to be more to it. Could it be an ironic stance? His voice is miniscule to the infinity, even though he chooses a word that puns infinity. Perhaps that's the significance.Quote:
Barnes, in the introduction, makes a clear statement about "Infinitive"... {But it is with "Infinitive" that Leopardi fully discovers
his own voice, setting aside public themes and focusing on objects and landscapes which take on far-reaching
emotional resonances.
Good find Quasi. I think that does help in setting the poem within his work's context.Quote:
"Infinitive" is the fiirst of a group of five poems composed between 1819 and 1821
(the first five in this selection), which Leopardi called "idylls." Here evocation and memory come to the
fore, while grief at the dashing of cherished hopes and the inexorable passing of tiime is sublimated in calm
contemplation of an immense, all-embracing nature. It was only later that Leopardii came to identify nature
itself as the prime cause of human unhappiness, a view that underlies his "great idylls" of 1829-30 (from
"The Solitary Thrush" to "Night Song of a Nomadic Shepard in Asia"). these poems evince a sense of universal
pain and a compassion that extends to all living people.}
This is probably a leap, but the choice of "infinitive" I take as an ironic choice over the use of "infinite", as if Leopardi wants to be subjunctive instead of declarative in tone. / An excerpt from a letter to Pietro Giordani (1917) -- "Poetry requires infinite study and application, and its art is so profound, that the more you advance in proficiency, so much the further does perfection seem to recede... To be a good prose writer first, and a poet later, seems to me to be contrary to nature, which first creates the poet, and then by the cooling operation of age concedes the maturity and tranquility necessary for prose." {30th April 1817.}
It would interesting to see how classicism makes its way into the text. The form of the poem, its genre, and subject matter seem to be very Romantic. I pointed out--in a post probably fifty posts back now--how the central act of this poem (meditating on the infinite and finite) has many similarities with key Romantic poems. Shelley's "Mount Blanc" and Coleridge's "Aeolian Harp" are two, but you can find examples all over the place. Another Romantic element is its genre: reflective lyric. The poet is meditating alone, and we're supposed to be "overhearing" (see Mill's definition of poetry which is frequently considered Romantic) the poet's self-address. This isn't a performance with lots of classical rhetoric (something we would see in a classicism mode). The poem is about the thoughts of a lone speaker. The poem makes clear that the poet is imagining the infinite. In a classicist poem, you would expect that the infinite or ideal or immense would be something real that the poet would understand--rather than something they would imagine. These are all basic building blocks of Romantic poetry. That doesn't mean that there isn't anything classical, though. Often critics set Romanticism and Classicism up as mutually exclusive since it makes explaining them easier, but frequently there's overlap.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
I'm not trying to convince you, Virgil. I'm just explaining my interpretation of the poem and how I came to that interpretation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
I am curious, though, why you now disagree with Aeolian Harp reference when you up until recently you seemed to agree that it was there:
That was six hours ago. You did go on to qualify your agreement:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
I think you'll agree that this kind of misses the point, though. In the poem it's not the wind that is limited but the sound it makes in the bushes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
It's not the wind that is limited, but it's "speech." As I explained before, the speech of the wind is the physical, linguistic embodiment of poetry in the Aeolian Harp metaphor. Thus, this is entirely within the usual Aeolian Harp metaphor.Quote:
And hearing the wind
Rush rustling through these bushes,
I pit its speech against infinite silence
What I was explaining in the post you quoted above was the Aeolian Harp. And I wasn't giving a far-fetched description. This isn't Quark spinning one of his wild theories. It's pretty much right down main street, "Intro to Lit" kind of stuff. As for this:
One might argue the entire poem is his personal feeling. But you don't even need to do that. The infinity is an imagined one. Imagination is only one of the biggest words in the Romantic vocabulary. And, again, this fits exactly with the Aeolian Harp metaphor. Imagination is the wind in that stirs the Aeolian Harp, just as imagination is the inspiration for the Romantic poet. The harp represents the material and limited world which inspiration has to pass through to becomes poetry. It creates audible sound or written poetry that others can experience. Similarly, the bush makes sound.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
That's all I'm saying. You can interpret it any way you want.
Good postings everyone, a lot to go on, good You Tube find Virgil.
I just thought I’d quickly share the note in the Nichols edition on this poem which comes from the Zibaldone once again, as it might be of interest:
...at times the spirit...desires a view which is in certain ways restricted and confined... The reason is...the desire for the infinite, because in those circumstances the imagination goes to work instead of the eyesight, and fantasy takes the place of what is real. The spirit imagines for itself what it cannot see, what that tree, that hedge, that tower hides from it, and goes wandering in an imaginary space, and pictures things it would not be able to if its sight extended everywhere, because the real would exclude the imaginary. Hence the pleasure which I always used to experience as a child, and do even now, in seeking the sky etc. Though a window, a doorway...
I think that there is a lot to take from this extract to support many peoples’ thoughts on the poem. For one it certainly shows his importance the imaginary has on Leopardi and the obvious connection that has with Romanticism. It clearly shows the favour of imagination over realism in this sense. From this piece it also paints a less bleak image perhaps as to the need for the infinite in order to tackle thoughts of a darker nature, there is some pleasure for pleasures sake. Of course the poem is the primary concern but I just thought I'd share it anyway.
I didn't realize you were going for a law degree and you were practicing your cross examination skills on me. :lol: Yes I acknowledged that the wind goes through the bushes like the Aeolian Harp, but I did not acknowledge I thought that's what Leopardi was referring to. The rest of my response was not a qualification to an agreement, but a refutation of the Aeolian Harp metaphor as analogous. I began that refutation with "But" which indicates I wasn't agreeing. :wink5:Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
Look I think this is such a short poem, it's possible to read this through the prism of Romanticism and through the prism of something other than Ramonticism, say Neo-Classicism. Or it's possible he's intentionally or unintentionally blending elements of both. A poet doesn't sit down and say i'm going to write a romanitc poem today, at least not a good poet.
Balderdash. We've been hoodwinked!Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
Backpedal, backpedal, backpedal. You said it was like the "Aeolian Harp metaphor," not the "Aeolian Harp." And, if you meant it was similar in only the most superficial of senses, why wouldn't you say that? Isn't it misleading to start a "refutation" of something by agreeing with them?Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
And some refutation it was.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
I'm open to that possibility, but no one has given us any reason to believe that the poem is Neo-Classical. Meanwhile, there are many reasons why it's Romantic: its subject has precedents in the Romantic tradition, the reflective lyric is a choice form of the Romantics, the speaker is addressing himself or herself on a "lonesome hill," there's a reference to the Aeolian Harp. All of these are reasons to look at the poem in a Romantic context. If there's something Neo-Classical, bring it forward.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
And yet there are Romantic poems. It doesn't matter what they intend to do when they sit down. Literary movements are not defined by what the artist is thinking when his or her asss hits the chair. Rather, they come from the subject of the work of art, its attitudes, form, vocabulary, and reception. Many poets believe that they're writing in one tradition when really they'll find their home in another. Two of the six major English Romantic poets (Blake and Byron) wanted to be considered part of earlier literary traditions. Yet they make up the heart of Romanticism now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Some people consider the British Romantic poets to be a highlight of British literature. I don't understand why putting a poem in it's literary-historical context makes it a bad poem. I guess, if it was just a generic Romantic poem with nothing else to distinguish it, that might be boring. No one is suggesting that, though. In fact, I said earlier:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
There is a lot going on this poem. It's not just any one thing. And, again, I find this an odd reversal from you. You've been shooting down any reading of the poem that you yourself have not already authored. To Paulem noticing the meditative element of the poem, to mortal suggesting that the poet is fleeing people, to mortal suggesting there's a commentary on artistic creation, to me suggesting that the poem is Romantic--to each of these you've folded your arms and shook your head. You've clung to one pretty reductive reading of the poem throughout: one where the infinite overwhelms the personal. That's a good reading, but when you turn around and claim that my reading is reductive--that to call it Romantic is to call it bad--then I'm surprised.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
And one last thing before I drop this:
This is not the definition of Romanticism. You've gotten hung up on Wordsworthian emotion, and you've let that define Romanticism for you. A lot of Romantic poetry, though, doesn't have sentimental shepherds or warm and fuzzy descriptions of landscapes. Much of it is cold and abstract. I gave some examples of this earlier. Shelley's "Mount Blanc" is a good one. Nature is not emotionally regenerative here; instead, it's quite terrible or plaintive. Romanticism is about a certain orientation to society and the self. It's about valuing imagination and sympathy over materiality and community. Romantics appreciate inspiration over effort. Many of them do idealize the trees and the hills, but not all of them. We shouldn't make nature appreciation the be-all and end-all of Romanticism.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
I don't even know what this means.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I am merely suggesting that you are deliberately attempting to mislead the group. Virgil and I are wise to your games. He knows that I know, I know that he knows, he knows that I know he knows, and we know that you know what we know. We're calling shenanigans. I'm joking.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
Still, I think the overemphasis on Romanticism must be questioned. It is framed as a classical Idyll. The extensive time he took to edit the poem is clue enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Of course, metrically speaking it follows conventional forms - the big shift is actually the emergence of Rousseau in his work at this point (according to my edition, which I won't paste here as I have no time to translate it from Italian and French). The encounter gives him a break with conceptualizing, according to the intro, "Bientôt de la surface de la terre j'élevais mes idées à tous les êtres de la nature, au système universel des choses, à l'Etre incompréhensible qui embrasse tout." - Rousseau.
Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle
E questa siepe che da tanta parte
De'll ultimo orrizonte il guarde esclude.
To me this lonely hill was always precious
And this hedgerow also , where so wide a stretch
Of the extreme horizon's out of sight.
What is the question of lonely? It isn't in the original - Ermo in this case as a suffix gestures toward "deserto" in connotation, simply meaning empty - perhaps a bit of a red-herring. The word "parte" in the second line as well is rather fond, as he uses it elsewhere with warm connotations (Garzanti edition note).
Ma sedendo e mirando interminati
Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete,
Io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura.
But sitting here and gazing, I find that endless
Spaces beyond that hedge, and more-than-human
Silences, and the deepest peace and quite
Are fashioned in my thought; so much that almost
My heart fills up with fear.
My problem is really with the bottom of this translation - It sort of flips the binary - ove, as a contraction functioning to link the parts. I cannot exactly think of a better way to translate it, because it is functioning on a negative, so rather than say my heart fills up with fear, it reads more like "my heart almost, for not a little, [wouldn't be able] to not be afraid. I can't exactly explain it, but the use of the positive on the verb instead of the negative seems to exaggerate the fearfulness of the scene.
E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando; e mi sovvien l'eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e'l suon di lei. Così tra questa
Immensità s'annega il pensier mio:
E'l naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.
Questionably though, the next bit doesn't use a subjunctive tense - it is rather strange, in the sense that he is presenting it as objective, when clearly he is writing of "il pensier mio," his thought. Also curious is in the third last line, his use of the preposition "tra" as apposed to something translating to in - as if he is passing through the infinite, as apposed to the infinite passing through him. The last bit also gestures to his desire to be destroyed within the infinity that is briefly passing him over. It all links back to what he wrote about it in the Zibaldone: "La natura l'abbia posta in noi solamente per la nostra felicità temporale, che non poteva stare senza illusioni." (taken from Garzanti edition note)
To me it seems not so much romantic as it does to be its own character; if I were to contrast it with something, I would be more inclined to compare it to this:
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Than to Tintern Abbey, which to me is the exact opposite poem. What Woodsworth is discussing, to me, is a wholeness found within his encounter with the Abbey and nature, whereas Leopardi seems to go the opposite direction; he is outside of it, and can only look at its enderlessness in contrast to his own limitation - he remarks on the extent that the illusion can sustain him, but he also laments the fact that the hill is merely a trick - my earlier comments toward the seasons and the wind to me suggest a reading based heavily on his use of the preposition "tra" which implies that everything passes through him, and the infinite offers him only a glimpse, implying his own mortality. The wind and the seasons then to me read as aspects of the infinity, as nature itself is, to me in my reading of Leopardi, central to his concept of the "infinity" or the endless.
What Leopardi does for much of his career is bemoan the cruelty of nature, as a bringer of suffering, in that it only affords brief periods that only lead to suffering and death. The hill then, in my reading, marks the viewing point, where he can see things move, and here the sounds, but ultimately, must descend from.
Oh for goodness sake Quark, here's my exact post from that response:Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
There is nothing in there that suggests i'm agreeing with you that it's roots are Romanticism.Quote:
I see your point Quark. Yes the wind through the bushes is similar to the Aeolian Harp metaphor, but with Leopardi, nothing the wind is limited in comparison the the scope of what it's set against, the infinte space. In fact he creates a direct compariosn: "pit its [the wind] speech against infinite silence." I think the key to this is evaluating the silence. There is a dichotomy. The wind is earthly, and the vastness of the horizon brings in another dimension, far reaching. The vastness of the horzon and boundless space is slient, "silences,/Deeper than human silence, an unfathomable hush" and that silence is what brings fear. And then there is the mentioning of dead seasons and the immensity that "drowns." It's only one small poem, and the rest will dictate to how similar or different Leopardi is from the Romantics, but i certainly see a distinction so far.
I believe JBI has, though I admit it's sketchy. I don't think there's such a pure definition of what is neo-classical as there is for Romanticism.Quote:
I'm open to that possibility, but no one has given us any reason to believe that the poem is Neo-Classical.
Well, the lyric is rooted in classicism too. Ever read Horace, Sappho, Pindar. Here's Ode 3.13 from Horace:Quote:
Meanwhile, there are many reasons why it's Romantic: its subject has precedents in the Romantic tradition, the reflective lyric is a choice form of the Romantics, the speaker is addressing himself or herself on a "lonesome hill," there's a reference to the Aeolian Harp. All of these are reasons to look at the poem in a Romantic context. If there's something Neo-Classical, bring it forward.
Song, country animals, nature, it could be seen as Romantic, but it's not. It's classical. Just because a poet contemplates nature, doesn't make him Romantic.Quote:
O Fount Bandusia, brighter than crystal,
worthy of sweet wine and flowers,
tomorrow shalt thou be honoured with
a firstling of the flock whose brow,
with horns just budding, foretokens love
and strife. Alas! in vain; for this
offspring of the sportive flock shall
dye thy cool waters with its own red blood.
Thee the fierce season of the blazing
dog-star cannot touch; to bullocks wearied
of the ploughshare and to the roaming flock
thou dost offer gracious coolness.
Thou, too, shalt be numbered among the
far-famed fountains, through the song I
sing of the oak planted o'er the grotto
whence thy babbling waters leap.
I agree there. We're not disputing what romanticism is. We're disputing whether Leopardi's poem has elements of it. While it seems to have elements in it, I think its core is not romantic. But like I said, we are each reading through a prism and this poem is too short to fully classify it.Quote:
And yet there are Romantic poems. It doesn't matter what they intend to do when they sit down. Literary movements are not defined by what the artist is thinking when his or her asss hits the chair. Rather, they come from the subject of the work of art, its attitudes, form, vocabulary, and reception. Many poets believe that they're writing in one tradition when really they'll find their home in another. Two of the six major English Romantic poets (Blake and Byron) wanted to be considered part of earlier literary traditions. Yet they make up the heart of Romanticism now.
Agreed.Quote:
There is a lot going on this poem. It's not just any one thing.
Why is that odd from me? :lol:Quote:
And, again, I find this an odd reversal from you. You've been shooting down any reading of the poem that you yourself have not already authored.
I have said we can read it your way too. I'm just not convinced. What do you want me to do, capitulate to make you happy? Look, I respect your opinion and reading. I happen to disagree.Quote:
You've clung to one pretty reductive reading of the poem throughout: one where the infinite overwhelms the personal. That's a good reading, but when you turn around and claim that my reading is reductive--that to call it Romantic is to call it bad--then I'm surprised.
Sure. If you read my earlier posts on this, I also said that the "infinite silence," "deeper than human silence," seems to suggest something outside of romanticism. It seems to be drained of mystery and spirituality.Quote:
This is not the definition of Romanticism. You've gotten hung up on Wordsworthian emotion, and you've let that define Romanticism for you. A lot of Romantic poetry, though, doesn't have sentimental shepherds or warm and fuzzy descriptions of landscapes. Much of it is cold and abstract. I gave some examples of this earlier. Shelley's "Mount Blanc" is a good one. Nature is not emotionally regenerative here; instead, it's quite terrible or plaintive. Romanticism is about a certain orientation to society and the self. It's about valuing imagination and sympathy over materiality and community. Romantics appreciate inspiration over effort. Many of them do idealize the trees and the hills, but not all of them. We shouldn't make nature appreciation the be-all and end-all of Romanticism.