The problem of the ‘guasto legnaggio’ in Leopardi’s ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’

When ¹ TS Eliot wrote that matured artistic talent requires a sense of both the presence and pastness of the past, he was not constructing a new concept, but rather, presenting in a masterful phrase a fundamental facet of literary history: the importance of intellectual, cultural and authorial genealogy. ² From the origins of literature to the present day, the formation of a link to preceding works has been a generative force. Though manifested in various ways, works of literature thrive because of genealogical attachment – not merely or primarily because writers often sense a need to legitimize their own authority through invoking the already legitimated authorship of a writer who has gone before, but also because through the generations, concepts, verbal images and experiences have been passed on and reused yet rearranged and reshaped by the unfolding of history and individual poetic perception, thus continually creating old yet new literature as a simultaneously cyclical and linear development. ³ While there is a danger of borrowing too simplistically or directly and thus becoming a bloomian weak poet (Bloom, 1973), weakness of another sort is almost inevitable for an artist of any medium who does not draw from the depth of what has gone before. A work of top quality must have elements of the handed-down past, even in order to speak adequately to the present. One might further suggest that, like an individual work of literature or art, a culture more generally can be relatively weak or strong depending on the degree to which its past is present through thoughtful reflection and reception.

The pastness and presence of the past, in both a literary and a more broadly cultural sense are central issues in Giacomo Leopardi’s ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante.’ The lack of a monument to Dante in Florence was to him a symptom of a greater illness, and the endeavor to build one only a step in the right direction. I will suggest that at the heart of this poem lies Leopardi’s sorrowful realization and declaration that the past’s presence is lacking due to a suspension of generational continuity, resulting in an impoverished and misdirected Italy with a ‘guasto legnaggio’ (Leopardi, 2010: l. 191). Beyond the monument itself, I will explore two additional symptoms that he discusses in the poem and which point together toward the same intrinsic concern on Leopardi’s part regarding Italy’s frozen, impotent state: the lack of interest in Dante’s work during the 17th century, and the death of Italian soldiers during Napoleon’s defeat in Moscow. The very fact that these additional issues were raised in this poem is evidence that to Leopardi a monument to Dante in Florence would not truly resolve the deep cultural problems that he saw plaguing Italy. At first glance these issues may seem disparate, jumping from sculpture to literature, and then to political history: how does one make coherent sense of a monument to Dante, his reception history and the failed Napoleonic invasion of Moscow? Leopardi did, and in this essay, while seeking in some sense to take up the perspective of Klee’s and/or Benjamin’s angel of history, ⁴ as one might suggest that Leopardi himself did (though of course not in these conceptual terms), hopefully these phenomena may become recognizable as manifestations of one single essential phenomenon that so plagued Leopardi in his time and place: the discontinuity between the past and the present. Ultimately, however, the proper identification of a problem – something I believe Leopardi accomplished – ought to be accompanied by a solution of sorts. Or, in keeping with Leopardi’s nuanced and ever-doubting manner, it may be better to say that he proposed not a solution, but a renewed perspective and direction, which he presented both within the poem and in prose written during the same period of time. Thus, I will also look at how Leopardi suggests Italy might mend its broken cultural lineage, which he does indicate within this poem, but which he more straightforwardly lays out in his writings that deal with the debates between the classicists and the romantics.

‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’ was written by Leopardi in September and October 1818 alongside its companion poem ‘All’Italia,’ which he wrote in September 1818; they were published together in Rome for the first time on 1 January 1819 by Francesco Bourlié, though they are dated 1818 on the frontispiece. Several months before ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’ was written, a manifesto was released on 18 July and distributed throughout Florence and Italy, pushing for the support of a monument to the Florentine poet. The sculptor and place for this monument had been established by this time; Stefano Ricci was chosen to create a cenotaph in Santa Croce. ⁵ Francesco Mazzoni (2010) points out that a burst of talk regarding a monument to Dante was associated with an impending problem for Florentines; if nothing changed by 1821, there would be no monument to the poet in Florence upon the 500th anniversary of his death. Indeed, this fact was stated explicitly in the manifesto. Roughly two decades before this latest push, between 1802 and 1804, the architect Luigi Cambray-Digny had also formed designs for a monument, with the similar intention of placing it in Santa Croce, and he had likewise taken up this project with a concern regarding the impending date of 1821. Of course, his designs ultimately went unrealized, but this may explain why Foscolo, who refers almost exclusively to monuments inside Santa Croce in Dei sepolcri (1967), would include a reference to Dante’s monument, though no such thing existed inside the church in 1806 when this poem was penned, and Ricci’s cenotaph had not yet been conceived. ⁶

Leopardi’s ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’ is frequently lumped together with these early 19th-century endeavors to bring forth a monument before the fateful year had passed. When Ricci’s work was officially dedicated – in 1830, well past the deadline – the manifesto of 1818 was reprinted, along with an extended essay, a list of donors and a series of fairly bland poems celebrating the monument’s completion. Within the essay, written by Melchiorre Missirini (1830), were selected passages from Leopardi’s poem; evidence enough that his words were appropriated at the time in association with the goals of the manifesto, though he is neither one of the signatories nor one of the men listed as donors to the sculptural project. The assumed harmony between Leopardi and this manifesto continues to the present day; James Houston (2010: 90) recently stated, ‘there is no doubt that this pamphlet spurred the poem by Leopardi.’ Amedeo Quondam similarly said of the poem that it was ‘predendo spunto da un manifesto pubblicato il 18 luglio 1818’ (2004: 89). Certainly, the talk of the time regarding a monument to Dante, significantly embodied in this manifesto, as well as Leopardi’s knowledge concerning Ricci’s forthcoming cenotaph led toward the writing of the poem – the title alone suggests as much. And yet, even as far as titles go, Leopardi said quite explicitly of his Canti in the Annuncio bibliografico that precedes the Annotazioni alle canzoni that ‘nessun potrebbe indovinare i soggetti delle canzoni dai titoli; anzi per lo piú il poeta fino dal primo verso entra in materie differentissime da quello che il lettore si sarebbe aspettato’ (1824: 173). As one can infer while reading his poetry, and as the poet’s statement clearly indicates, his titles do not often function as identifications of the primary, central or sole subject, but rather tend toward being launching points into unexpected terrain. This is no doubt the case in ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante,’ and thus as much as the title (and some of the content) indicate that the plans for the monument played a role in inspiring the poem, Leopardi’s thoughtfully problematized relationship with titles simultaneously indicates its acentrality within the piece as a whole.

The young Leopardi’s concerns were a good deal more profound than merely that of completing a monument by a certain date, and I would suggest that if he was indeed spurred by the manifesto of 1818, it may have been out of a desire to enrich the otherwise shallow wish for an empty tomb to be built by a given time. While addressing Florence in the poem, he does in fact loathe the reality that ‘non sorgea dentro a tue mura un sasso’ (2010: l. 27), and he thus appears to be in harmony to a degree with this basic goal of the manifesto – and also, for that matter, with Foscolo’s (1967) Dei sepolcri – in respect to his thoughts on the importance of memorials carved in stone for the sake of remembering great figures of the past in order to inspire those in the present. In ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’ Leopardi no doubt affirmed Foscolo’s realization regarding the potential significance of monuments; in the sections of the poem that directly address the forthcoming cenotaph, his praise for the undertaking is significant, calling those who work on it ‘pietosi’ (2010: l. 30) men who were carrying out a ‘bell’opra’ (2010: l. 32). However, the lack of a marble image of Dante in Florence was not the ultimate solution to the poor state of Italy that Leopardi loathed in the poem. Further, as indicated by the subversive means by which Leopardi approaches holidays or anniversaries in poems such as ‘La sera del dì di festa’ and ‘Il sabato del villaggio,’ a sense of necessity for a monument to Dante in Florence would not likely plague him merely because of any forthcoming date.

It is no accident that in Missirini’s 1830 essay accompanying the reprinted 1818 manifesto, when he quotes from lines 74–90 of Leopardi’s poem, a segment in which he addresses Dante, Missirini omits lines 79–85. ⁷ In line 78 Leopardi writes, ‘io so ben che per te gioia non senti,’ and for Leopardi, in the lines to follow, the cause for this lack of joy relates ultimately to the lesser significance of mere bronze and marble when compared to Dante’s fame (that is, his poetry), which had been forgotten. Missirini’s presentation of the poem, however, entirely ignores Leopardi’s point. In the essay, lines 78 and 86 of the original poem are placed next to one another. Line 86 is in fact the start of a new stanza, but nevertheless, these lines are fully juxtaposed under Missirini’s hand. Further, a colon is added in order to imply that lines 86 and following are a direct continuation of line 78, thus twisting Leopardi’s actual train of thought in the work. Lines 78–86 in Leopardi’s poem are as follows:

Io so ben che per te gioia non senti,

Che saldi men che cera e men ch’arena,

Verso la fama che di te lasciasti,

Son bronzi e marmi; e dalle nostre menti

Se mai cadesti ancor, s’unqua cadrai,

Cresca, se crescer può, nostra sciaura,

E in sempiterni guai

Pianga tua stirpe a tutto il mondo oscura.

Ma non per te; per questa ti rallegri

Povera patria tua, s’unqua l’esempio

Degli avi e de’ parenti

Ponga ne’ figli sonnacchiosi ed egri

Tanto valor che un tratto alzino il viso.

Missirini’s version of Leopardi’s poem, beginning from Leopardi’s line 78, reads (changes in punctuation are his):

Io so ben, che per Te gioia non senti:

Ma non per Te, per questa ti rallegri

Povera Patria tua, se unqua l’esempio

Degli Avi, e de’ Parenti

Ponga ne’ figli sonnacchiosi ed egri

Tanto valor, che a un tratto alzino il viso.

‘L’esempio’ of which Leopardi speaks, edited and pulled out of its context by Missirini, now seems to be merely that of Dante’s statue, perhaps alongside the statues of the other great figures in Italian cultural history that also sit inside the Florentine ‘pantheon’ of Santa Croce. A fuller use of ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’ could have been very enlightening at the time of the monument’s unveiling. It would have greatly enriched the Florentines’ and Italians’ realization regarding the potential role of the monument within a much larger and more beneficial endeavor of restoring a better sense of the past for the sake of the present, but this opportunity was altogether ignored – or worse, unrecognized. The handling of Leopardi’s poem during this moment only indicated that the illness of the past’s lack of intrinsic presence remained, even if one of the symptoms had been addressed. When the cenotaph was completed, rather than perhaps being a step in the right direction, it became a tragic symbol that was very much in harmony with the lamentations of Leopardi’s poem. The monument that stood inside Santa Croce was a tomb without a body, a presence of absence. The metaphor was almost too perfect: just as Dante’s body was missing from that tomb, invoking incompletion, so the sense of true cultural continuity was left wanting. The erection of the monument had been a hollow act; the cenotaph became a ‘gesture without motion,’ as Eliot wrote regarding the acts of hollow men (Eliot, 1963).

This lack of intrinsic cultural continuity in Italy was not only a recent problem in Leopardi’s view, as indicated by some of the other symptoms he touches on in the poem. He hints at another in lines 81 b–85, which ironically are the bulk of the section edited out by Missirini:

E dalle nostre menti

se mai cadesti ancor, s’unqua cadrai,

Cresca, se crescer può, nostra sciaura,

E in sempiterni guai

Pianga tua stirpe a tutto il mondo oscura.

Dante’s work had indeed escaped the minds of Italians (and not only Italians for that matter) to a significant extent during the 17th century. Compared to 34 editions of the Divine Comedy that were printed during the preceding century, ⁸ only three editions were realized in the 1600s: one in 1613 and two in 1629. Not only was the number small; all three of these editions were saliently spare, with no accompanying commentary, illustrations or other sorts of complementary material, as was commonly included in printed editions of Dante’s work from incunabula onward. Further, apart from a Venetian edition of De vulgari eloquentia in 1643, none of his other works were printed at all during this century. Michael Caesar (1995: 36) suggests that the popular metaphor among literary historians of a winter for Dante in the 17th century has its exceptions and may be a little extreme, but nevertheless it was, as he put it, a ‘low point’ in the poet’s reception. The reading (and therefore the influence) of Dante’s work on the creative production during this century had been cut off significantly, and thus this poet, who had played such a key role in forming the Italian creative imagination in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, was rather suddenly reduced to relative obscurity. Perhaps even more important in terms of cultural heritage and continuity, Dante was not only a pivotal figure in shaping the poetics of the centuries that immediately followed him; he digested and remained in dialogue with millennia of literary and cultural history that preceded him, from Homer to the French Provençal poets. He was as good as any poet in history at handling the presence of both the deep and recent past, and so to ignore Dante was to halt an important node within the chain of poetic genealogy. Further, with specific regard to Italian literary history, in the Zibaldone Leopardi (1977) agreeably echoes Alfieri, who identified Dante as a foundation for Italian writing as much as the Bible and Homer were foundations, more generally, for writing itself.

Three major causes of Dante’s relative absence (or frozen presence) during the 17th century are aptly identified by Michael Caesar (1995). First, there was hostility toward the Commedia during the Counter-Reformation, including the placement of the poem on the Index of banned books in 1614. Second, there was a change in literary style and taste toward a preference for a more hedonistic ease of entry into works of poetry, thus making Dante appear both stylistically harsh and academically dull. It is worth noting how Eliot (1932: 247) perceived and criticized this same issue: ‘In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered … while the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude.’ ⁹ The third cause was the desire among poets of the 17th century to be purely ‘modern’ and to overtake the past with newfound, present ingenuities.

Another important factor, which Caesar (1995) mentions in relation to the third cause, may merit more attention than it has to this point been given. The Accademia della Crusca had used Dante and other trecento Tuscan writers (namely Petrarch, Boccaccio and Villani) as the basis for their dictionary of 1612, which played a central role in their endeavor to standardize the Italian language. Seventeen years prior, in 1595, they had also published one of the final editions of the Divine Comedy before its extended absence from any printing press. An abundance of changes were made to the text in their edition, and in this sort of manner, ‘l’Accademia della Crusca incominciò a insignorirsi della letteratura italiana,’ as Foscolo bemoaned (1958: 241). A total of 465 differences have been identified between their edition and the Aldine text, which they claimed to take as their basis. A careful study of the Crusca edition, specifically pondering the possibility that Dante’s text was morphed for the purposes of the motive-driven project of the Accademici, with their ‘ideologia linguistica militante,’ (Tesi, 2005: 10) would perhaps be a fruitful one. Whether or not this was the case in the 1595 Commedia, the prescriptive grammar of the Crusca that so heavily used the name of Dante (among several others) was in fundamental contradiction to Dante’s own eclectic use and appreciation of language. If the ‘moderns’ were wrong for their part in ignoring the past and assuming they could go on without it, the Crusca too was at fault for presenting the past in a guise that seemed duller than it truly was, and thus less worthy of attention. In relation to Dante at least, the Crusca did not understand the essence of the literary past, nor did they realize (as Dante did during his own time) that the preceding poetic models and use of language needed to be reshaped according to an insightful perception of the present. Thus, in the 17th century Dante not only fell out of favor in both religious and secular circles: he was by and large misrepresented when he was represented at all, being used as a key figure for a prescriptive grammar to which he would never have himself adhered. Even when his name appeared, his own sentiments had been largely left behind. His supposed presence, to the extent that there was any, was hollow. Thus Dante ‘fell from the minds’ of the Italians, as Leopardi bemoaned. As a key figure of literary and cultural continuity, to ignore him, or to fundamentally alter his poetics, was not merely to forget his oeuvre, but to let the handed-down yet continually renewed tradition of which he was an important part fall by the wayside. More than merely forgetting Dante, a larger cultural genealogy that both preceded and followed him had been set aside. This produced a cultural illness for which symptoms – including the lack of a monument to Dante in Florence – were continually manifest.

The clearest indication within ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’ that, to Leopardi, addressing one symptom cannot heal the illness is the manner in which he handled the loss of Italian soldiers in Russia. By 1818, Italy had been officially liberated for three years from the French as a result of the Congress of Vienna, and commentators, it seems correctly, are in universal agreement that the opening lines of the poem refer directly to this fact. Yet, Leopardi still extensively loathes the fact that the Italians under Napoleon died for his failed cause during the 1812 invasion of Moscow. The problem was apparently solved – Italians would no longer find themselves fighting and dying for Napoleon or any other Frenchman – but because both its cause and effect were still strongly present, it was nevertheless given thorough attention. Though we are shifting here from a frozen literary genealogy to the literal freezing of bodies, this facet of Leopardi’s poem too should be ultimately viewed in metaphorical and symptomatic terms. Indeed, this bit of recent history was also used as a means to lament Italy’s failed cultural continuity. Even though Italians were no longer dying for a Frenchman on Russian soil, the problem of loss and misdirection remained highly pertinent.

This particular symptom is the focus of two full stanzas, but the following passage should suffice as an entrance point into a core element of this segment of the poem (and more essentially, the poem as a whole, viewed from another angle):

Allor, quando traean l’ultime pene,

Membrando questa desiata madre,

Diceano: oh non le nubi e non i venti,

Ma ne spegnesse il ferro, e per tuo bene,

O patria nostra. (ll. 146–150)

The death of Italian soldiers was not in itself the tragedy, but their wasted death, which impoverished rather than enriched their fatherland. Hinted at in these lines (and others within the stanzas on the Italians’ death in Russia) is the longstanding literary trope of death for the betterment of the people and the land. All too ironically, Leopardi enters into this tradition in order to emphasize that the Italians had veered from their own roots.

Regarding this literary tradition, a brief mention of noteworthy instances along this chain ought to suffice. A key moment in the Aeneid (viewed propagandistically as Virgil’s endeavor to link the glories of Troy to Augustan Rome) is the prophecy by Aeneas’ father Anchises in Book Six: ‘the stern decrees of Fate’ that dictate that he would die for ‘the land of Romulus’ (Virgil, 2008: 211). Jeffrey Schnapp (1986) has convincingly argued that Dante mirrors this episode in the Aeneid in Paradiso XVII with Cacciaguida’s prophecy to Dante the pilgrim (though in the pilgrim’s case he hears not of death but of exile). ¹⁰ During the process of the christianization of antiquity, Tertullian of Roman Carthage, whom Leopardi (1977) named as a great Christian writer from Africa alongside Augustine, wrote in the same line of thought regarding recent Christian martyrs: ‘their blood is a seed which dies not on the earth, but puts forth prosperously’ (1655: 178). This idea of the prosperity of future generations being a result of the ultimate sacrifice (when properly directed) had been established for millennia within the traditions that Italians had identified as sources of their own – and well before the time that Leopardi drew from this trope.

Even in using this longstanding literary history to speak of Italy’s present misdirection, Leopardi was entering into a well-aged Italian tradition in its own right. Petrarch’s political poem ‘Italia mia’ (1304–1307) likewise loathes the useless shedding of blood. He speaks at one moment of Italian mercenaries who ‘sparga ’l sangue et venda l’alma a prezzo’ (Petrarch, 1964: l. 62). The connection between ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’ and Petrarch’s ‘Italia mia,’ though, goes beyond this limited association. Leopardi’s full poem, which has also been shown to have extensive echoes of Dante (Luzzi, 2008), is a lamentation of continual wars during the 14th century with the German ‘barbari,’ and thus Petrarch’s ‘tedesca rabbia’ (1964: l. 35) had made its presence known on Italian soil. Similar to the deaths of Italian soldiers under Napoleon, here too we have the unnecessary deaths of Italians (above all in the case of the Italian mercenaries), and the unwelcomed influence of a foreign power. Though Petrarch did not oppose the shedding of ‘Latin sangue gentile’ (1964: l. 74) at the proper time, the thrust of this particular poem and his ultimate wish are well embodied in words from his concluding line: ‘pace, pace, pace’ (1964: l. 122). Leopardi’s poem inversely begins with the ‘pace’ (2010: l. 1) that had already been obtained, but because he did not merely desire the end of a historical war but a resolution for what it metaphorically represented, this was only the start of his lamentation.

In ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’ Leopardi identified the problem of a broken cultural genealogy with an acute and symptomatic reading. Even if he was not as fully aware of some of the issues discussed here, such as particular details of Dante’s reception history, ¹¹ the fact that such supplemental information enhances his ultimate point only further indicates the depth of his perception. An important question remained, however: how should this problem be mended? Leopardi presents his opinion on this within the poem, and he also significantly presented his views more straightforwardly in prose the same year he wrote this piece, and also two years prior. Indeed, this poem (along with ‘All’Italia’) goes hand in hand in many ways with Leopardi’s endeavor to add his perspective to the classicisti v. romantici debates that are well embodied in his shorter response to Madame de Staël in 1816 and his longer Discorso di un Italiano intorno alla poesia romantica of 1818. These works in prose lend clarity in some respects to Leopardi’s prevalent manner of thinking that is nestled within the more esoteric words of ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante.’

From the selected excerpts within this present essay alone one could realize that in ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’ the genealogical metaphor is well developed. Italians are represented as descendants (legnaggio) of Italy as a mother (2010: l. 147). To bring forth proper sons (as opposed to the deplorable guasto legnaggio) requires the right fathers. Thus Leopardi says, ‘volgiti agli avi tuoi’ (2010: l. 191), and thus during his apostrophe to Dante he calls him ‘padre’ (2010: l. 137), directly echoing a frequent title assigned by Dante the pilgrim to Virgil in the Commedia. ‘L’esempio’ of Dante in Leopardi’s poem is perhaps most significantly that of a ‘son,’ which is to say, one familiar with and conscious of his predecessors, who then becomes a father and brings forth more children with mother Italy. As for this mother, if no such fathers arise, ‘meglio l’è rimaner vedova e sola’ (2010: l. 200), Leopardi concludes in the final line of his poem.

In 1816 Leopardi presented his thoughts on how a proper generational continuity ought to be restored and continued with more literal terminology in his response to an article by Madame de Staël which had been written, translated into Italian and published that same year. One among numerous of her striking statements that embodies her argument was the following:

Dovrebbero a mio avviso gl’Italiani tradurre diligentemente assai delle recenti poesie inglesi e tedesche; onde mostrare qualche novità a’ loro cittadini, i quali per lo più stanno contenti all’antica mitologia: nè pensano che quelle favole sono da un pezzo anticate, anzi il resto d’Europa le ha già abbandonate e dimentiche. (De Staël, 1816: 16)

Though she claimed to be writing regarding the benefits of good translation in order that fewer writers would be limited to texts from their own country, a primary purpose in the piece was truly that of presenting her opinion regarding Italian shortcomings, and also furthering her preference for ‘poesia romantica.’ It has been argued (Pratt, 1985) that she meant to aid Italy toward a healthier literary reconstruction, but this was often not how her words were understood at the time, or afterward for that matter. Leopardi’s response, though understandably bearing a tone of malcontent, included statements that were no less striking. While directly addressing his fellow Italians, he wrote: ‘leggete i Greci, i Latini, gl’Italiani, e lasciate da banda gli scrittori del Nord, e ove pure vogliate leggerli, se è possibile non gl’imitate, e se anco volete imitarli, non aprite più mai … Omero, Virgilio e Tasso’ (Leopardi, 1969: 881). Regarding Italian literature, he declared that ‘è di tutte le letterature del mondo la più affine alla greca e latina’ (1969: 882). In his Discorso di un Italiano intorno alla poesia romantica written two years later, his arguments were far more fleshed out and his writing more layered as he presented his perspective on the issues at the heart of the debate between classicists and romanticists. Yet even in this later piece, some striking sentiments still arise, as in the following address to his fellow Italians: ‘viene che siete figli de’romani, allievi de’ greci e non de’ barbari, che siete italiani e non tedeschi nè inglesi’ (1954: 59). In his 1816 writing, he declared that the Italians’ literary and cultural lineage was especially given to them as a ‘puro dono d’Apollo’ (1969: 881). As one can begin to sense when reading such statements as these, the true Italian sons and fathers in ‘Sopra il monumento di Dante’ are descendants who are adequately aware of their literary and cultural lineage, which, the young Leopardi seems to claim, was given particularly to them – and further, their language and their literature was uniquely worthy of the gods, as he would have it.

Though not as evident within the metaphorically oriented suggestion in the poem, it appears that during this time in Leopardi’s intellectual formation he not only favored a patriotic revitalization of the past, but a highly charged italocentric undertaking that would keep the country pure, as if purging it from cultural contamination. His exhortation to avoid reading and especially imitating anything produced north of the Alps, coupled with his implied declaration (even if following the likes of Petrarch and Vasari) that the Germans and the English were barbarians, would indicate as much. While this no doubt would strike a 21st-century reader as a truly disconcerting sentiment, and for well-founded reasons, in his defense, Leopardi himself did not practice what he preached here. He was truly well versed in the literature of languages and cultures beyond his own and in fact did not personally need much of the very translation which De Staël encouraged. It is also important to recognize that he was writing in polemical defense of a land (and the classical literature which it had often held dear) that had been poorly regarded, especially in the aftermath of the very events Leopardi loathed in his patriotic poems, namely the Napoleonic Wars. Prince Metternich, who convened the Congress of Vienna, viewed Italy not as a coherent cultural unit of any sort, but simply as a ‘geographical expression.’ Thus, given the highly delicate political moment, the timing of Madame de Staël’s article was at best out of touch, or worse, knowingly pernicious. Leopardi’s response to her in 1816 and his longer reply phrased in more general terms two years later were charged as a result with nationalistic consciousness. Unlike the frequent elusiveness of his poems’ titles, Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica is very much central to the point of his piece: he was writing as an Italian replying to a literary movement the ‘infiltration’ of which, in his opinion, threatened the cultural coherence and identity of Italy. Yet, defenses aside, Leopardi’s words still stand for themselves as indications of a troubling viewpoint that, however eloquent and in a number of respects insightful, was not yet tempered through time and maturity. Though from a slightly different perspective, this lack of balance is indicated by Michael Caesar’s analysis of the Discorso: ‘Leopardi in a sense takes the easy and obvious way out by simply denying any intellectual function to modern poetry, a position that, at least in so bland a form, he will not be able to sustain for very long’ (Caesar, 1982: 311). His still youthful response to the romantics’ viewpoint was no doubt a major reason why neither of these pieces were received for publication at the time he wrote them and that neither reached the public eye until well after his death.

A crucial fault in Madame de Staël’s opinion (potential motives aside) is her lack of regard for the pastness and presence of the past – importantly including Greek and Roman mythology. Leopardi, meanwhile, essentially disregarded (at least in his writing here) other contemporary languages and cultures. If drawing from the past meant looking exclusively to the Italian past, as he promoted on these occasions, a major cause underlying the very problem of frozen Italian cultural continuity that Leopardi loathed would be repeated; once again, an ideologically driven normative restriction would be introduced into Italian cultural production. As impressively broad and historically conscious as young Leopardi was in respect to the specific monument to Dante in Florence, we also find here a partiality – and thus a blind spot – in his perspective. The anti-eclectic prescriptiveness of the Crusca and the Catholic Church in the midst of the Counter-Reformation had played roles in largely keeping Italians away from Dante. An irony, in light of Leopardi’s statements regarding literature north of the Alps, is that during Dante’s forgotten century one of the most influential authors who deeply respected the Florentine poet and his classical influences was John Milton, a ‘barbarous’ Englishman. If one could speak of resolving the problem of Italy’s guasto legnaggio as it relates directly to Dante (but also what he more largely represents), an important lesson of history that Leopardi missed was that attempts to normativize or purge any given cultural phenomenon had played a role in creating the problem – and thus, it would likely not be wise while attempting to mend such issues to foster new prescriptive approaches.

But of course, Leopardi moved well beyond these early writings, with complexities and positive contradictions increasing through time within his poetry and prose. Today, like Dante, he too is a cultural ‘father,’ though still principally within the confines of the Italian language and of Italy itself. Yet as of late, he seems to be on the rise in other languages, in the Anglophone world in particular, with noteworthy translations in recent years of his poetry and other writings – most significantly the first full translation of the Zibaldone in 2013. As a broader audience of writers and readers of English become more acquainted with this outstanding poet and thinker, a marvelous opportunity arises for an enrichment of writing and thinking in this tongue. Leopardi is indeed worthy of the status he bears in Italy as a cultural father, and he certainly merits increased status as such among English speakers as well. After all, genealogies – especially those related to cultural production and artistic influence – should not be determined merely by ties of nation, language or blood. This emerging reception of Leopardi on a broader scale, though perhaps a development somewhat contrary to the hyper-nationalistic preferences of the young Leopardi, could potentially open doors toward a more truly universal digestion of his work, perhaps in some respects, though to a lesser degree, reminiscent of the significantly enlarged scope of Dante’s reception that began not long before Leopardi’s own time. In light of the genealogical evolution that Dante’s work underwent, and that Leopardi’s writings too could potentially undergo, perhaps Leopardi’s own words can begin to be repeated with newfound significance: ‘return to your ancestors.’