"E tu, cui già dal cominciar del 'anni
Sempre onorata invoco,
Bella Morte, pietosa
Tu sola al mondo dei terreni affanni:
Se celebrata mai
Fosti da me, s'al tuo divino stato
L'onte del volgo ingrato
Ricompensar tentai:
Non tardar più, t'inchina
A disusati preghi:
Chiudi alla luce ornai
Questi occhi tristi, o dell 'età reina!"
The finest passages in his poems were inspired by the deepest anguish of his heart. Ill-health and deformity he felt as evils, chiefly because they prevented him from appeasing his ardent yearning for love.
This yearning was the result of the sweetness of his disposition. Notwithstanding his melancholy, he seems never to have been morose or disagreeable. His heart was unblemished by spite or malignity, and he was, by universal testimony of those who knew him, singularly moral and upright in all relations of life. Ranieri, in his "Sette Anni di Sodalizio," published some years ago, tries to show his faults, but the worst he can say of him is that he was excessively choice in his diet. This little weakness he had in common with Alexander Pope, a poet in whom the unkindness of nature produced very different effects. Pope's omniverous vanity could derive nourishment even from his deformities:
"There are who to my person pay their court:
I cough like Horace, and, though lean, am short;
Great Ammon's son one shoulder had too high;
Such Ovid's nose, and 'Sir, you have an eye!'"
But Leopardi wrote the "Last Song of Sappho:
"Placida notte, e verecondo raggio
Della cadente Luna," etc.
Vanity seems to have entered in no way into his composition. Nor had he any of that ferocious vindictiveness which inspires many verses of Pope with the venom of the deadliest vipers, though he also had his libellers and his rivals. We know what revenge Pope took on the women who slighted him, and with what unspeakable ribaldry he defiled them. But Leopardi, in a similar position, wrote his incomparable "Aspasia," not even revealing the real name of her to whom he alludes. The most striking instance, however, of their dissimilarity, is the difference in their philosophy. Pope's self-complacency allowed him to indulge in optimism, with which, however, many of his finest passages are at variance. His intellect had sudden flashes of intense truth, but he was not a systematic or profound thinker, and when he wanted a system of philosophy as theme to his brilliant verse, he took that most in vogue in his time.
Widely different was the development of Leopardi. He is the embodiment in song of the spirit of pessimism, if that disagreeable word is to be the cosmopolitan representative of what the Germans call "Weltschmerz." His view of life is not the result of a sourness that would make everything appear bad and unsatisfactory, but of an overweening compassion for the sufferings of his fellow creatures. We hear his. lamentations on the evils of life, but in his pages we see such visions of beauty, such revelations of love, such exquisite glimpses of nature that the world appears in his poetry more beautiful, though more terribly and darkly beautiful, than in reality. If we analyze a stanza or paragraph of his poems, we find a train of thought that recurs with curious regularity. It generally opens with the most richly coloured and delightful scenes; but when the reader is fully impressed with their loveliness, the clouds gather, and the poet concludes with the utterance of despair. The ode to Angelo Mai offers the earliest instances of this in almost every stanza. It is also strikingly exemplified in the opening paragraph of the "Vita Solitaria." Sometimes a whole poem evolves in this manner, like the "Primavera," and the verses to Silvia. Such was, indeed, the progress of his life. It began with the most radiant and heavenly visions, it was darkened by the storms of reality, and it concluded in sorrow and in gloom. Although his sufferings did not originate his view of life, they certainly made him express it with more poignancy than he would otherwise have done.
The consideration of his philosophy leads us into the sanctuary of his works. We have to deal exclusively with his poems, and can therefore only bestow a passing glance on the other performances in which he displayed the vigour of his mind.