Leopardi was a favorite of Gladstone. I translated then and published, Gladstone’s favorite among his verses, The Infinite.
Gladstone ranked him with masters of antiquity, Greeks of flawless technique. It was from the Greeks he learned his technique, lofty standards, unswerving measure of judgment.
When I finished reading what was inside the book, I read all the advertisements on both covers, over and over. There is no shabby writing done by people who have been thoroughly thrashed through their Greek and Latin.
One can sit in reverence before the great soul of Leopardi, as one sits at foot of Attic marbles, dumb, worshipful, dazed with unreachable beauty. Someone should coin a phrase for him as fine as Gautier coined for Tertullian. I wrote to Italian publishers to send me lists of their new books. Out of these lists I got the same pleasure a hungry cat gets out of a canary in a lovely, gold, glittering, swinging cage.
It was months before I could buy another book. When at length the pennies were scraped together, the selection was careful and painstaking, like that of a miner sifting gold. I at length decided upon the Odi Barbare of Carducci, to whom Dante’s words apply without strain: Degli alti poeti ognore e lume.
Reading Carducci gives something the sensation of looking at the etchings which Piranesi made of Rome; noble, imperial, history-freighted, unforgettable.
The only difference is that Piranese made his pictures upon paper, while Carducci chiseled upon resisting stone. I have always liked best the ode to Rome, entitled merely Roma.
Roma ne l’aer tuo lancio l’anima altira Volante,
accogli o Roma e avvolgi l’anima mia di luce,