Giacomo Leopardi

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Giacomo Leopardi

• 1798-1837

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Leopardis Philosophical Poetics

• Leopardis thought evolves from the gradual
  awareness of his own unhappiness, whose origin
  can be found in the poets environment and
  historical background
• The lack of a caring family, a conservative
  formal education, the solitude and isolation of
  his upbringing, the illnesses derived from the
  mad and desperate dedication to his studies,
  the derision of the citizens of Recanati, the
  mediocrity of the citys cultural environment,
  had a great impact on Giacomos sensitivity and
  intelligence
• The historical background was characterized by
  the crisis of the Enlightenment, the birth of new
  ideologies, the crisis of the intellectual (loss
  of political and civic role), the political and
  cultural backwardness of the papal state
• Leopardi came to maturity during the Restoration,
  which saw the conflict between nationalism,
  liberalism and romanticism on one side

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• And cosmopolitism, absolutism and classicism on
  the other
• On the literary scene those years saw the polemic
  article written by Madame de Stäel on Romanticism
  and Classicism
• The point of departure of Leopardis
  speculations, ultimately aiming at illuminating
  the meaning of life, is the existential malaise
  of the poet, his physical and psychological
  unhappiness.
• Such sentiment is at the origin of an existential
  pessimism whose characteristics are
  
  a) a precocious recognition of ones
  youthful illusions and dreams
  
  b) a growing distrust for
  life
  c) a (not yet rationalized) feeling
  of disappointment and desolation d) a distaste
  for all sorts of social constraints
  e) a sense of uselessness and
  suffocation

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Historical Pessimism (1816-20)

• Leopardis thought advances from an analysis of
  the condition of unhappiness, whose causes,
  dynamics and consequences are investigated
• At the foundation of this condition he places the
  theory of Self-Love, according to which man is a
  creature that, by necessity, is drawn to self
  preservation and self love. Anything one does,
  even good actions towards others, are driven not
  by selflessness, but by the opposite desire to
  please primarily the self (deriving pleasure from
  good deeds)
• Self love is at the origin of good deeds, even of
  noble deeds, while egoism is caused by a
  degeneration of self-love, produced by the
  development of civilization, which is dominated
  by reason. Egoism is one of the consequences of
  the negative historical progress which brought
  man, according to Leopardi, from Nature to Reason
  (involution, barbarism)

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• Leopardi rejects the optimism of the new
  ideologies and the reassuring utopias of his
  time. He revolts against the closemindedness and
  the conventions of his class. He celebrates a
  mythical world of noble virtues and incorruptible
  values, a world in which glory and fame are the
  only antidotes against the grayness of life. He
  attacks vehemently the centurys myths, history
  and progress, and the simplemindedness of a
  century that celebrates MAN as the creator of
  reality.
• He criticizes the fanatic anthropocentrism of the
  time and affirms that history is not progress but
  involution from the primitive state of nature,
  happy and good, to a civilized condition, corrupt
  and decadent
• In the history of humankind he recognizes four
  ages a) the primitive (state
  of perfect harmony and innocence) b)
  classical antiquity (synthesis of nature and
  reason) c) the M. A. (common
  places of the Enlightenment - dark ages) d)
  the modern (reason, coldness, rationalism,
  inauthentic life)

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• Leopardi rejects any civil and technological
  progress, convinced of its negativity. To him
  civilization means distancing man from nature.
  The world becomes more and more corrupt.
• Cause of all ills is Reason, enemy of Nature,
  mother of society and of all its egoism. Reason
  has destroyed the ancient heroic age
• Leopardis dream is to recapture the ancient
  flame, the vivacity of the imagination, the
  strength of illusions, the energy of yesterday
  against the tedium of today. This can only
  succeed through the recapturing of memories
• Like Foscolo, Leopardi understands the need for
  illusions (glory, self love, love for the
  country, honor, virtue, love) they are in
  synchrony with Nature and constitute the only
  antidote against progress and civilization.
  Poetry for Leopardi must foster illusions
• The history of humankind is about the battle
  between happiness and truth, illusion and
  reality, hopes that humanity must keep alive in
  order not to surrender to despair. Illusions hide
  from men the tragedy of life (Il sabato del
  villaggio)

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• The Real is also illusory (Schopenhauer). Reality
  is the enemy of happiness
• Leopardi, son of the age of Reason, revolts
  against it, proclaiming the superiority of what
  is thought, dreamt and hoped for (against what is
  real)
• Happiness (against the most coveted tenet of the
  Enlightenment) is given not by the knowledge of
  reality but by its ignorance. To know more means
  to suffer more. Who augments knowledge (is
  written in the Bible) augments suffering.
• In sum, Leopardis historical pessimism can be
  expressed in the following antinomies, the first
  with positive, the second with negative value
  
  a) Nature
  b) Reason
  a) Ancient
  b) Modern
  a) Natural
  state b) Society
  a) Illusion
  b) Real

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• Cosmic Pessimism (1823-1830)
• During the years of his poetic silence
  (1823-7), Leopardi completely changes his initial
  conception, rehabilitating Reason against Nature.
  As he continues to analyze the causes of human
  unhappiness, he observes that the natural impulse
  is contrasted, on the individual level, by a
  twofold limitation, biological and ontological.
  On the historical level he sees egoism as a third
  limitation (the plague of society)
  a) humanitys
  intrinsic weakness. Discovery of ones fragility
  b) impossibility of happiness. Nature endows
  man with a drive to happiness, but this is
  unattainable (since it is infinite and totally
  fulfilling). Its search leads to a finite and
  concrete unhappiness. The momentary pleasures are
  but a relative short truce in the unending
  unhappiness
• Leopardis Teoria del piacere Man is driven to
  find pleasure, but pleasure exists only in desire
  (since it is a purely speculative concept).

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• Desire is imagination, hope, dream, and as such
  it is always projected in the future and always
  destined to remain unfulfilled.
• Pleasure exists as pleasures, seen, negatively,
  as cessation of the unhappiness, brief moments of
  absence of pain concrete but ephemeral, they
  make suffering tolerable, giving us back,
  although momentarily, the élan vital.
• Theory of Self Love and Theory of Pleasure are
  connected man is always, unsuccessfully, seeking
  happiness. He seeks pleasure, but it is finite,
  driving man to look for a higher, more powerful
  one, that he never finds. The tragedy of
  humankind is in this unending search for the
  infinite, which unerringly results in defeat
• Pleasure is always hoped for, never possessed,
  always future, never present always fleeting.
  Never being possessed it becomes a hope, a desire
  or an expectation. The deriving concept of
  pleasure is therefore negative, that of suffering
  is positive a)
  pleasure is the absence of pain
  b) suffering
  is not the absence of pleasure (La quiete dopo la
  . . . )

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• This is the concept of negative pleasure if
  suffering ceases (pleasure being its
  counterpart), pleasure does not take its place,
  but noia does (ennui-angst-despair). Life (as in
  Schopenhauer) oscillates between suffering and
  ennui.
• The historical limitation the irreconcilable
  difference between individual and society their
  interests are diametrically opposed. Humanity,
  always seeking its own pleasure, behaves
  antisocially (and this in full accordance with
  Nature). As a consequence, Leopardi admits that
  all societies (including the ancient) are bad,
  and that humanity is inevitably marching toward
  its destruction. No hope or confidence is given
  to scientific and technological progress, to
  economic expansion, to industrial and colonial
  exploitation.
• All three limitations considered, Leopardi
  concludes that all is evil. To exist equals
  eternal disillusion, suffering, alienation.
  Responsible for all this is Nature, source of
  humanitys sorrows (La sera del dì di festa,
  Dialogo della Natura e di un Islandese, Cantico
  del gallo silvestre, Canto notturno di un pastore
  errante dellAsia)

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• In sum
• Man is born to suffer joy is but a momentary
  cessation of pain
• From mans perspective (existential level), the
  entire universe seems to conspire against
  humanity. From the absolute point of view
  (metaphysical level), life is a natural process
  that alternates the living through birth and
  death
• Nature, seen as a malevolent and brute force, is
  responsible for our tragic destiny
• Man knows his destiny, and that renders him
  unhappy. This awareness leads him back to
  himself, to the primary source of his
  unhappiness, his own life. Death is the only
  refuge to the living

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Heroic Pessimism (1830-7)

• After Leopardi leaves Recanati (April 30, 1830)
  there is an ideological turn (anticipated in the
  Dialogue of Plotinus and Porphiry, 1827) from a
  materialistically negative vision of reality to a
  positive agonistic message. Reasons for the
  change a) The friendship with
  the Tuscan liberals
  b) The failed love relation with Fanny
  Targioni Tozzetti c) The
  conflicts with the Neapolitan spiritualists
  d) The practice of
  philology in the search for answers to the
  existential drama
  
  e) The discovery of satirical language as
  expressive instrument f) The reading of
  Epittetus (Greek stoic) and Theophrastos
  (disciple of Aristotle and founder of
  materialistic empiricism)
  g) The distancing from stoicism and atarassia
  (from indifference to participation
  
  h) The need for a
  constructive ethics and for a heroic attitude,
  based exclusively on the human being (not on a
  transcendental power)

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• In the Diaolgue of Plotinus and Porphiry we find
  the first expression of Leopardis new phase a
  call for solidarity in front of the human destiny
• Later on in the Zibaldone he defends his
  philosophy against the accusation of misanthropy
  (not man is culpable of our ills, but Nature)
• In a letter to Giordani (1828), Leopardi
  criticizes the political and cultural trends of
  his time, which professed their complete
  confidence in the magnifiche sorti e
  progressive. He initiates a battle against
  historicist optimism, and against political and
  legislative commitment, that he sees animated by
  the ridiculous pretense to create a betterment
  for society and at the same time ignoring the
  real necessities of the individuals.
  
• In the last years Leopardi abandons the most
  metaphysical pessimism in favor of a more
  relativistic one, founded on the recognition of
  two different levels of truth

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• a) the level f the order of things (objective
  reality)
  b) the level of existence (quality of
  life, history, culture)
• There is thus a double origin of suffering, that
  caused by a) inevitable because external,
  produced by life itself illnesses, catastrophes,
  physical decay etc.) b) can be contrasted because
  it is not determined by Nature but by the human
  being. Hence Leopardis discovery of a heroic
  resistance and of social commitment
• Historical ills are caused by the free reign of
  egoism we all live to die, and even if we are
  commonly living in the same misery, we fight to
  prevail, to succeed at one anothers expenses.
  This egoism, the manifestation of the lowest
  human drives, accrues human suffering, makes our
  lives less tolerable.
• Man is a rational being. Subject to his culture,
  he can learn to suppress his lowest instincts,
  and produce alternative values compassion,
  solidarity, friendship.

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The Ethics of Solidarity

• Task of Philosophy (filosofia dolorosa ma vera)
  is to educate humanity first to openly recognize
  the ills of life and then to mitigate them
  through participation in the culture of the time
• The role of the poet is to serve truth and
  humanity, as he promotes real culture and
  authentic social progress attention to the
  individual and to his complexity rather than
  attention to a social class or an economic group
• It is the message encoded in La ginestra (the
  Broom) Leopardi calls for a great alliance of
  all human beings, a social chain (social
  catena) that unites all against the brute force
  of Nature. Leopardi refuses the idea of Divine
  Providence and all the silly ideas of his proud
  and simple century
• The final message is an irreducible rationalism.
  The conquest of a giusto sapere (just
  knowledge) shall be the foundation of a new
  society, a society built exclusively with human
  strength