This beauty infinite, no slightest part
To wretched Sappho did the Gods or Fate
Inexorable give ...
(F. H. Cliffe)
One is reminded of Sappho’s silver moon in Leopardi’s calm first lines, and also of Sappho’s autumn fragment in the lines “where in shade Of drooping willows doth a liquid stream Display its pure and crystal course....” Leopardi also translated the famous midnight song ([p. 78]) and imitated the third fragment in La Impazienza. Carducci’s (1888) comment on Leopardi is worth quoting: “la poetessa di Lesbo non fu nè brutta nè infelice come il Leopardi l’accolse a imagine sua da una tarda tradizione, e che della bellezza e dell’amore intese gustò, e cantò più non potesse il Leopardi.” Leopardi believed in two Sapphos, as did Zannoni (1822), following the judgment of Visconti. About 1793, Pagnini (Pilenejo), wishing to praise Teresa Bandettini Landucci, likened her to Sappho in genius but not in habit:
Te rediviva Saffo ognuno estima
Pari d’ingegno, e d’arte a quella prima:
Ma per costumi e voglie in tutto sei
(Vanto maggior) dissimile da lei!
Parini about 1777 dedicated an ode to Lady Pellegrina Amoretti d’Oneglia on her graduation from the University of Padua, La Laurea, in which he said that if instead of studying law she had given herself to literature she would have been the equal of Sappho. In 1782 Verri published Le Avventure di Saffo, in which there is a paraphrase of the second ode. This romance was written in good literary style and had some fine thoughts and considerable Greek atmosphere. It went through more than a dozen editions, and was twice translated into French. In 1787 Parini celebrated the seductive qualities of a Venetian Signora Cecilia Tron in a poem of which I quote the first two stanzas: