Descripción editorial
Struttura tripartita con canzoni, idilli e canti pisano-recanatesi. Si compone di 23 componimenti: All'Italia Sopra il monumento di Dante che si prepara in Firenze Ad Angelo Mai quand'ebbe trovato i libri di Cicerone della Repubblica [con dedicatoria a Leonardo Trissino] Nelle nozze della sorella Paolina A un vincitore nel pallone Bruto minore Alla primavera o delle favole antiche Inno ai patriarchi o dè principii del genere umano Ultimo canto di Saffo Il primo amore [Elegia I B24] L'infinito. Idillio I La sera del giorno festivo. Idillio II Alla luna [La ricordanza] Il sogno La vita solitaria Alla sua donna Al Conte Carlo Pepoli Il risorgimento A Silvia Le ricordanze Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia La quiete dopo la tempesta Il sabato del villaggio
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A towering figure among European Romantic poets and a national hero of Italian letters, the tormented, learned, sometimes hyperbolic Leopardi (1798 1837) has inspired other writers and defied translators since before his early death: the 41 elegies, odes, love poems, and meditations called Canti lie at the heart of his work. Leopardi wrote at the bloody start of the movements that brought Italy independence: early odes call on the nation's "glorious ancestors" to revive lost patriotic hopes. Yet his enduring sadness was not so much political as metaphysical, erotic, and nostalgic: "my heart is stricken," he writes, "to think how everything in this world passes/ and barely leaves a trace." Landscapes and villages, and indeed his own memory, yield fleeting joys that self-consciousness takes away: "If life is misery," one of his characters asks the moon, "why do we bear it?/ But we're not mortal,/ and what I say may matter little to you." Several canti lament the deaths of beautiful women. To Leopardi's elaborate stanzas Galassi (who has also translated Montale) brings a light touch and a feel for modern speech. This bilingual version comes with copious notes aimed at beginners, informed, but not overwhelmed, by Italian scholarship.
