Quotes About Leopardi

Four very strange and truly poetic human beings in this century have attained mastery in prose, for which this century was not made otherwise—for lack of poetry, as I have suggested. Not including Goethe, who may fairly be claimed by the century that produced him, I regard only Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Mérimée, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, as worthy of being called masters of prose.35 93

Leopardi aveva ragione: gli Italiani sono alla pari dei popoli più progrediti tranne che per due aspetti fondamentali: l'alfabetizzazione e una totale confusione delle idee

So my mind sinks in this immensity: And foundering is sweet in such a sea".

So my mind sinks in this immensity: [15] and foundering is sweet in such a sea.

We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light.

In fact the problem Leopardi is facing is speculative and metaphysical, a problem in the history of philosophy from Parmenides to Descartes and Kant: the relationship between the idea of infinity as absolute space and absolute time, and our empirical knowledge of space and time.