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Ό FAMOSO SCOPRITOR':

REDISCOVERING 'AD ANGELO ΜΑI'

Ora poiché la poesia, come tutte le cose di questo mondo, a forza d'uso si snerva, che rimedio ci troverà questo nostro tempo scopritore e ritrovatore?

("Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica," 1818)

1819/ Introduction

From a distance, "Ad Angelo Mai" does not appear to signal a major departure from the previous two canzoni civili, "All'Italia" and "Sopra un monumento di Dante." In its call to Italy to rise up from its state of moral and civic slumber, to break free from the chains imposed by Restoration and the Santa Alleanza, and to be inspired by the heroes of its past, the canzone appears to be faithful to its epic genre in content as well as form. And yet, though the political situation remained relatively unchanged (to the poet's dismay), we must remember that the year separating the first civil canzoni from "Ad Angelo Mai," 1819, is a pivotal one in the life and work of Leopardi. In addition to the psychological torment of being trapped in his father's home, this period was also marked by the physical obstacle of his ever-weakening vision, a condition which made it virtually impossible for the young scholar-poet to read or write. Barred from his primary occupation, Leopardi began to see more clearly the hopelessness of his life, a discovery which encouraged reflection of a more philosophic than literary nature. As he describes it in the Zibaldone, 1819 was a year of transition:

La mutazione totale in me, e il passaggio dallo stato antico al moderno, segui si può dire dentro un anno, cioè nel 1819 dove privato dell'uso della vista, e della continua distrazione della

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lettura cominciai a sentire la mia infelicità in un modo assai più tenebroso, cominciai ad abbandonar la speranza, a riflettere profondamente sopra le cose (in questi pensieri ho scritto in un anno il doppio quasi di quello che avea scritto in un anno e mezzo, e sopra materie appartenenti sopra tutto alla nostra natura, a differenza dei pensieri passati, quasi tutti di letteratura), a divenire filosofo di professione (di poeta ch'io era) a sentire l'infelicità certa del mondo, in luogo di conoscerla, e questo anche per uno stato di languore corporale, che tanto più mi allontanava dagli antichi e mi avvicinava ai moderni. (144, 2 July 1820) 1

If the previous canzoni, nourished by the enthusiasm and ideals of his "Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica" (1818) aligned the poet with the ancients, the personal strife of 1819 pulled him closer to the moderns. Notwithstanding Leopardi's definition of 1819, so weighed down by pessimism, this time was not as void of hope and poetic spirit as it may appear. There is one experience, one discovery which brightened this otherwise fatal period and counterbalanced or mitigated the transition from poetry to philosophy, from illusion to truth. I am referring of course to the miracle of his first idyll, "L'infinito," written in the darkest months of these darkest years. Peaceful, sentimental, and deeply poetic, this poem is a reminder that even in the most forbidding desert, something beautiful can grow.

As the first poem of 1820 (it was written in the first days of January), "Ad Angelo Mai" reflects the conflicting experiences of the preceding year. A poem of marked philosophical significance, it sorrowfully proclaims Leopardi's discovery of the "infelicità certa del mondo." But it also contains signs of the infinite, signs of an undying belief in the powers of poetry to heal the wounds of history. From the vantage point of this canzone, we are made aware both of the limits, the unavoidable truths of history, and the ability to transcend these limits through poetry's illusions, its vision of the infinite.

Inspired by the contrast or tension between lyric and philosophic visions and voices, my reading of "Ad Angelo Mai" will highlight the ways in which it gives form to Leopardi's discoveries of 1819, while inaugurating a period of intense creativity. My primary concern is that of showing how this canzone functions as a sort of threshold poem, one that allows us to see what lies on either side of Leopardi's immortal hedge. Animated by letters, idylls, and philosophical reflections, this paper intends to explore the ways in which the writing of poetry can

function as a surrogate, however weakened, of action. Because 1998 marked the bicentennial celebration of Leopardi's life, my reading will culminate in an affirmation of his struggle to keep poetry (and all it stands for) alive in the arid climate of modern times.

First signs

Leopardi considered his canzone, "Ad Angelo Maio quand'ebbe trovato i libri di Cicerone della 'Repubblica'," to be both of and for the moment. As the title suggests, this song is not only dedicated to Mai himself, but to a specific historical event: his discovery of Cicero's De repubblica. As he expressed in one of many fervid letters to his publisher, Pietro Brighenti, this poem was not intended to be buried away in his study, perhaps to be found by some philologist centuries later, but, faithful to the tradition of civic poetry, was written to be read, hot-off-the-press, by his (sympathetic) contemporaries: "le canzoni sono per la maggior parte adattate al momento, e massime quella al Mai che doveva uscire mentre è calda la fama della sua ultima e più strepitosa scoperta" (7 April 1820). Leopardi's excitement over this discovery of Cicero's long-forgotten political discourse by the esteemed Vatican librarian, who along with Vincenzo Monti and Pietro Giordani was one of the cultural heroes of Leopardi, is not to be questioned. Though sparked by a specific recovery of a classical text, the canzone is in part a tribute to a scholar who had been nurturing Leopardi's own passion for philology since 1815, when Mai brought to light the works of "il secondo fra gli Oratori Romani" (Poesie e Prose, 933), M. Cornelius Frontone.

In his letter to Mai of January 10, 1820, which precedes the canzone by the time it takes to dip a pen into an inkwell, Leopardi expresses, in the glowing, flowing rhetoric of a true fan, his admiration and support for the philologist's revival of the virtues of Humanism: "Ella è proprio un miracolo di mille cose, d'ingegno di gusto di dottrina di diligenza di studio infatigabile, di fortuna tutta nuova ed unica. In somma, V. S. ci fa tornare ai tempi dei Petrarca e dei Poggi, quando ogni giorno era illustrato da una nuova scoperta classica, e la maraviglia e la gioia dei letterati non trovava riposo." In addition to voicing his praise, Leopardi also confesses, in this same letter, his longstanding desire to compile a series of critical studies that would highlight "le vere ed intime utilità e pregi" of Mai's philological discoveries. Though

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his health had made it impossible for him to devote himself to this project, or any other ("intieramente disfatta, e da nove mesi un'estrema imbecillità dei nervi degli occhi e della testa"), Leopardi credits Mai's most miraculous discovery ("tale da risvegliare i più sonnacchiosi e deboli") with rousing him from this weakened state and inspiring him to return to the study of the ancients. In the conclusion of the letter, he humbly requests that the pages of the Ciceronian manuscript be sent to him, one at a time ("acciò che la mia fatica abbia più spazio"), for commentary and inclusion in his comprehensive study of Mai's work. Unable to wait for the mauscript to arrive (in fact, he wouldn't see it until his visit to Rome in 1823), Leopardi turned to poetry to vent his enthusiasm and to give relief, if for a moment, to the deep sufferings of his soul.

Knowing of Leopardi's classical formation and his strong desire to break out of the intellectual wasteland of Recanati and to actively participate in Mai's cultural Renaissance, we would expect his own poetic voice to join in here, as it had in the previous canzoni, with those of his glorious heroes. Taken at face value, the canzone "Ad Angelo Mai" is in fact, as the book was meant to be, a tribute to the philologist's work, and, more importantly, to his power as a symbol of the revival of humanism in an age of relative indifference. But hidden beneath the seemingly innocent title, the choice of poetic genre, and the heroic rhetoric is a voice much altered.

The first sign of this change is the title itself, chosen not because it best reflects the subject or mood of the poem but because it was harmless enough to prove an apt decoy. For political and moral reasons, Monaldo Leopardi had vehemently opposed both the reprinting of his son's civil canzoni of 1818 and the two funereal canzoni of early 1819, whose titles ("Nella morte di una donna fatta trucidare col suo portato dal corruttore per mano ed arte di un chirurgo," "Per una donna inferma di malattia lunga e mortale") were an easy target even for careless readers like Giacomo's father. Well aware of the "orribile fanatismo" of his newest verses, and of his own equally fervid desire to see them published, Leopardi entitled the poem after the Monsignore Angelo Mai so that it would make it past the censorship of his father.2 His trick worked and the canzone which, despite its title, has very little to do with manuscripts, was printed at the poet's own expense (though it was later to be sequestered by the more diligent censorship of the Austrian police). Leopardi viewed his deception as necessary to the times and to

his situation as prisoner in his own home and country. It was his way of defending the freedom of the press, of speaking out publicly against the cowardly prudence of his father and others like him, who would limit the scope of all literary works to the ancient past instead of daring to voice the injustices of the present: "Ma se volessimo seguire i gran principii prudenziali e marchegiani di mio padre, il quale, come ho detto, non ha niente di mondo letterario, scriveremmo sempre sopra gli argomenti del secolo di Aronne, e i nostri scritti reggerebbero anche alla censura della quondam Inquisizione di Spagna. Il mio intelletto è stanco delle catene domestiche ed estranee" (Letter to Brighenti, April 28, 1820). Transcending limits both political and domestic, Leopardi transforms a joyful philological event into a somber yet passionate song, one that in a somewhat rhapsodic and roundabout way gives form to those ideas and sentiments which were closest to the poet's heart at the time.

Another warning to the reader that something has changed in the life and mind of Leopardi by 1820 is found in the dedicatory epistle to Leonardo Trissino, in which the poet first announces the true subject and "function" of his canzone. With all hope of returning to the glory days of ancient Italy buried in the disappointing truths of modern times, the poet's only task seems to be that of dressing his verses in black and writing the funereal song of his nation: "ai disgraziati si conviene il vestire a lutto, ed è forza che le nostre canzoni rassomiglino ai versi funebri" (Canti, 325). Different from the "Sepolcri" of Foscolo and from his own momument to Dante, both essentially songs of memory intended to remind Italians of their heroic past and inspire a future "risorgimento," this newest canzone will mourn instead the failure of memory to revive what has been irretrievably lost. Even writing and humanistic studies, looked upon as the "ultima gloria nostra" in the dedicatory (to Vincenzo Monti) which accompanied the two canzoni civili of 1818, are seen not as the best way to liberty and fame, but as substitutes for action, imagination, and discovery. ("Ma eziandio nella lettere siamo fatti servi e tributari; e io non vedo in che pregio ne dovremo esser tenuti dai posteri, considerando che la facoltà dell' immaginare e del ritrovare è spenta in Italia.") Still, even though words are like nothing in comparison with the heroic feats of the past, the poet justifies the canzone in question by recognizing that literary pursuits may be the only alternative to the immobility of modern times: "Sicché diamoci alle lettere quanto portano le nostre forze, e applichiamo

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l'ingegno a dilettare colle parole, giacché la fortuna ci toglie il giovare co ' fatti com'era usanza" (Canti, 325). Only the act of writing poetry, along with that of struggling to have his writings published under less than ideal circumstances, indicate that the surrender is not total.

Though he admits to not being as tearful as Petrarch by inclination, Leopardi concludes his dedicatory by saying that tears are both necessary to the times and in accordance with the will of fortune ("necessità de' tempi e volere della fortuna"). Like the deception of the title, so will sorrow and tears prove an appropriate and liberating poetic response to the ill-fated times. The fact that this song will be characterized by lament, in itself signals a major shift from the more patriotic and heroic voice of previous canzoni, which were more in tune with the Petrarchan model. While Leopardi urged his country to cry purifying tears of shame in "All'Italia" ("Piangi, che ben hai donde, Italia mia," v. 18) and "Sopra il momumento di Dante" ("Volgiti indietro, e guarda, ο patria mia, / quella schiera infinita d'immortali, /

e piangi e di te stessa ti disdegna [...]" vv. 11-13), we must remember

that he, in contrast, did not weep. As his country mourned, the poet

continued fighting, hoping his solitary song would revive the liberty and

glory which appeared to be buried deep beneath Italian soil ("io solo /

combatterò, procomberò solo io, / Dammi, ο ciel, che sia foco /

agl'italici petti il sangue mio," "All'Italia," vv. 37-40). Though he

vowed in "Sopra il monumento," to persevere in his poetic revolution

for the rest of his life ("Io mentre viva andrò sclamando intorno, volgiti agli avi tuoi, guasto legnaggio," vv. 190-1), it would seem that by January of 1820 he had — however unwillingly — joined the ranks of the defeated. As the dedicatory to Trissino suggests, "Ad Angelo Mai" is the first song in which the poet, now virtually as lifeless as his patria, accepts his fate and experiments with finding a voice suited to this particular form of sadness.

This more mature experience of sorrow, represented in the canzone itself not by Petrarch but by Tasso, a poet closer to Leopardi's genre of melancholy, is rooted in the revelation of the solid nullity of existence and the misery of the human condition. It is a further testament to the pivotal year of 1819, when the poet's more noble ideas and hope-driven sentiments had festered too long in the stifling prison of Recanati. As he expressed most clearly in a letter to Pietro Giordani on December 17th of that year, just a month before "Ad Angelo Mai," this period marks a dramatic change in the nature and cause of Leopardi's sorrow.

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If in previous years his sadness was fired by a heroic anger (an anger clearly driving the first two civil canzoni), by the end of 1819 he saw no reason to take sides, to defend one man over another, for all were now revealed to be victims of the same fate: "[...] Era un tempo che la malvagità umana e le sciagure della virtù mi movevano a sdegno, e il mio dolore nasceva dalla considerazione della scelleraggine. Ma ora io piango l'infelicità degli schiavi e de' tiranni, degli oppressi e degli oppressori, de' buoni e de' cattivi, e nella mia tristezza non è più scintilla d'ira, e questa vita non mi par più degna d'esser contesa." Gone the happy, hopeful, imaginative days of childhood, so passionately defended in his "Discorso di un italiano sopra la poesia romantica" (1818), the modern poet's only duty is that of mourning the end of the world — or at least of its near total eclipse.

***

For purposes of commentary, the canzone's twelve stanzas (of fifteen verses each) could be divided into two main parts and a brief conclusion. Often skimmed over by readers in favor of the historic core of the poem, the first four stanzas introduce through a series of questions and stark, life-and-death contrasts, the difference between the "modern" experience of the poet and that of the more "ancient," heroic Angelo Mai. The reason my own reading will stress the first part of the canzone (the resignation of Leopardi in particular) is so that against this darker background, the otherwise concealed optimism of the second part will emerge in greater relief. Commonly referred to as Leopardi's profoundly pessimistic "philosophy of history,"3 stanzas five through twelve appear to tell the story of the slow death of the world through a chronologically ordered pageant of modern Italian heroes. As I hope to show, however, in this second part of the canzone the poet's voice rises out of the doubt and darkness of its beginnings in order to counter the disappointments of history with the more hopeful vision of poetry. Distinguishing his own discoveries from those of Mai, Leopardi calls upon the names of his country's most celebrated poets — Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Alfieri — and in so doing evokes the continued relevance of poetry as a way to revive his sleeping times. Only Columbus, who follows Petrarch in the order, is seen as a sort of anti-hero. As one of the first representatives of the scientific approach to knowledge, Columbus's discoveries are seen in a negative light because

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they define the world's limits instead of multiplying its illusions of the infinite. After an homage to the poetic-patriotic pair of Tasso and Alfieri, ripe with personal references, the canzone comes full circle with a final appeal to Mai in the last few verses (vv. 175-80). My reading will acknowledge the ways in which the canzone's heroic recollection defines the indifference of the poet's own "secolo morto." More importantly, however, it will strive to prove that Leopardi emerged out of 1819 with a confirmed belief in poetry as the best way to dissipate the "noia" and "nulla" of modern times.

Twilight (stanzas 1-4)

Telling is the fact that the canzone begins not with a strong statement or image, but with a series of questions which serve to highlight the futility of Mai's philological quest and the more timely relevance of the poet's own passivity:

Italo ardito, a che giammai non posi di svegliar dalle tombe i nostri padri? ed a parlar gli meni a questo secol morto, al quale incombe tanta nebbia di tedio? E come or vieni si forte a' nostri orecchi e sì frequente, voce antica de' nostri, muta si lunga etade? e perché tanti risorgimenti? In un balen feconde venner le carte, alla stagion presente i polverosi chiostri serbaro occulti i generosi e santi detti degli avi. E che valor t'infonde, Italo egregio, il fato? Ο con l'umano valor forse contrasta il fato invano? (vv. 1-15)

In contrast to Leopardi's letter to Mai, filled, as we saw above, with

untainted praise for Mai's discovery and support for his humanistic

Renaissance, these verses give us the doubtful, problematic perspective

of a conscientious objector, a retired revolutionary who, though not void

of admiration for Italy's heroes past and present, is himself no longer

able or willing to bring his "secol morto" back to life. So entombed is

the present age in the dust of boredom and forgetfulness that Mai's

incessant resurrection of ancestral voices seems not so much miraculous

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as anomalous. Instead of whole-heartedly applauding Mai's numerous philological "risorgimenti," the poet finds himself wondering "why now?" and "how come"? Insistent in his demands, he asks the bold and tireless Italian why he doesn't stop raising the dead ("a che giammai non posi / di svegliar [...]"), how he is able to lead their chorus of voices through the thick silence of the present ("E come or vieni / si forte a' nostri orecchi [...]") and make dust-encrusted pages spring back to life in a flash. The tone and spirit of these questions is closest to those which the wandering shepherd will direct at the silent moon in the first stanza of Leopardi's great idyll "Canto notturno di un pastore errante" (1829-30): "Che fai, luna in ciel, dimmi, che fai, [...] Ancor non sei tu paga / di riandare i sempiterni calli? / Ancor non prendi a schivo, ancor sei vaga / di mirar queste valli?" (vv. 1; 5-8). Like the shepherd, the voice of the poet in the canzone to Mai is that of a man so sick and tired of life that all who still continue in their terrestrial or celestial rounds provoke a sense of wonder and even a flash of hope. Indeed, both poems are a search for a possible identification between man and his immortal gods and heroes (or others, like the herd of sheep, who seem to lead a carefree existence) a search for a way to transcend the pain of the human condition.

As they highlight the uniqueness of Mai's quest, the final verses of the first stanza (vv. 13-15) seem in fact to allow for such a victory of human valor over fate. But this possibility is weakened by the questions themselves (and the answers implied), by the insertion of the tentative "forse," and most importantly by the forcefulness of the rhyme scheme "umano-invano." A poetic device central to this and to future canzoni ("Nelle nozze della sorella Paolina," "A un vincitore nel pallone," "Bruto minore," "Ultimo canto di Saffo") the rhyming of the stanza's two final hendecasyllables hammers down the central message of the poem. 4 One need only glance ahead at the couplets which close the other stanzas, "tarda-codarda," "viltade-etade," "solo-duolo," "culla-nulla," "brutto-tutto," to realize that, as Leopardi confessed, this canzone has little to do with Mai and his manuscripts. Instead it announces the poet's own discovery of the futility of human battles against fate, and the pain and emptiness which result from such a discovery.

The second stanza reiterates the contrast between the vigor and valor of Italy's buried past and the death-like reality of the patria's shameful present. A stanza of twilight, its overall mood is that of hope setting into oblivion. Through its stress on the pull of forgetting

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("ch'ove più lento / e grave è il nostro disperato obblio," "gli eroi dimenticati il suol quasi dischiude"), and on time being just about up ("Ancora è pio"; "anco si cura," "s'a questa età sì tarda / anco û giovi") this stanza suggests that Italy is hanging on by the thinnest of threads to its past. To evoke the title of another idyll, close in time as well as temper, there is the sense here not of dawn, but of the imminent end of the country's "di di festa." Even with the dubious consent of the gods (for the forgetful nation seems, in turn, to have been forgotten by all but an unspecified immortal — "qualche immortale") and the clamorous reveille of the heroes, it seems unlikely that Italy will be able to scrape away the rust and recover something of its illustrious past.

Twilight gives way to total darkness in the third stanza, which is the most significant of the entire canzone for what it reveals about the 1819 shift in Leopardi's vision from bright to dark, from hopeful to profoundly pessimistic. Once a visionary, a symbol of youth and imaginative fecundity, in these verses the poet places himself at the opposite end of the life spectrum from the philologist and his immortal crew.

Di noi serbate, ο gloriosi, ancora

qualche speranza? in tutto

non siam periti? A voi forse il futuro

conoscer non si toglie. Io son distrutto

né schermo alcuno ho dal dolor, che scuro m'è l'avvenire, e tutto quanto io scerno è tal che sogno e fola fa parer la speranza. Anime prodi, ai testi vostri inonorata, immonda plebe succese; al vostro sangue è scherno e d'opra e di parola ogni valor; di vostre eterne lodi né rossor più né invidia; ozio circonda i monumenti vostri; e di viltade siam fatti esempio della futura etade (vv. 31-45).

As they alternate between questions and apologetic responses, between personal digressions and moral condemnations, these verses trace a dividing line not only between past and present, but also between the poet's own quest and that of his heroes. Though the future may still be visible to them ("A voi forse il futuro [...]"), to him, in contrast, it has been eclipsed by pain ("Io son distrutto [...]"). A curtain has been

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closed, and the poet (introduced by one of only two personal references in the entire canzone) is momentarily isolated from the rest of the world — past, present, and future. So dark does all appear to him that even hope — that ability to envision a potentially bright future which nurtured his previous writings — seems like nothing but a dream.

The third stanza is particularly significant because, through its passage from the "io" of the poet to the collective "noi" of the "immonda plebe" ("siam fatti esempio [...]"), it unveils the connection between Leopardi's personal experience and his extremely fatalistic vision of his age as a whole. (In continuation of the canzone, as in the first two stanzas, the collective "noi" includes the voice of the poet's own self and is placed in contrast to the "voi" and "tu" of the heroes.) This referential structure differs from that of the previous, civil canzoni, in which the poet, acting as mediator, addresses both heroes and contemporaries as other. In its mixture of personal and collective voices, "Ad Angelo Mai" seems to inaugurate a pattern which will be common to idylls like "La sera del di di festa," "A Silvia," "Il passero solitario," and the "Canto notturno," in which a dialogue with a "hero" of sorts leads to a recognition of personal strife which, in turn, gives way to a similarly pessimistic vision of all mankind. Perhaps the best poetic example of this referential pattern is his idyll, "Canto Notturno," a poem which, perhaps because of my own fondness for it, I cannot help hearing in many of the verses of "Ad Angelo Mai." Like the poet's dialogue with his heroes, the shepherd's questions to the moon and his herd lead him to conclude that not only his, but also everyone else's life is doomed to tedium: "Ma tu per certo, / giovinetta immortal, conosci il tutto [...] a me la vita è male"; "O greggia mia che posi, ο te beata

[...] me, s'io giaccio in riposo, il tedio assale [...] è funesto a chi nasce il di natale." That the canzone to Mai represents a poetic parentage for later idylls like the "Canto notturno" becomes even more evident when we look ahead to the verses of the canzone directed at Petrarch in the first phase of his "philosophy of history": "Oh te beato, / a cui fu vita il pianto! A noi le fasce / cinse il fastidio; a noi presso la culla / immoto siede, e su la tomba, il nulla" (vv. 72-75). Though clearly rooted in the events and characters of modern Italy, such similarities suggest that there is something in the canzone to Mai that transcends history and challenges the chronological distinction (1823) between historic and cosmic pessimism in Leopardi's oeuvre. Though the later "grandi idilli" are more successful in their attempts to bridge the gap

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between lyric poetry and philosophy, the only hope for the "risorgimento" of Italian letters, the canzone to Mai is no doubt one of the first "evening songs" in which the lives of those more fortunate are placed in contrast to the paralysis of both the poet and the modern age. 5

It is difficult to underestimate, especially in this period of Leopardi's work and life (1819-1820), the ways in which the public reflects the personal, and the mind reflects the sufferings of the body. The verses of the third stanza, like the pessimism ("historic" with a "cosmic" thrust) which clouds the entire canzone, are a further testament to the crisis suffered by the poet at the time of its composition. In his letter to Mai of January 10, 1819, mentioned in my preliminary remarks, Leopardi alluded to the poor state of his health ("intieramente disfatta," etc.) and the detrimental effects of his weak vision on his philological studies. But to appreciate the full significance of the canzone and the way it both microcosmically mirrors and functions within the cosmos of Leopardi's oeuvre, the 1819 letters to his soul-mate Pietro Giordani prove much more illuminating. It is here that the poet describes the effects of both his weakening eyesight (the price of erudition) and his situation as prisoner in his own home on his vision of life.

As Leopardi explains to his friend, by March of 1819 the combination of physical limitations and ardent hopes of fame and glory was beginning to prove lethal:

Da Marzo in qua mi perseguita un'ostinatissima debolezza de' nervi oculari che m'impedisce non solamente ogni lettura, ma ogni contenzione di mente. Nel resto mi trovo bene del corpo, e dell'animo, ardentissimo e disperato quanto mai fossi, in maniera che ne mangerei questa carta dov'io scrivo [...]. Non ho più pace, né mi curo d'averne. Farò mai niente di grande? né anche adesso che mi vo sbattendo per questa gabbia? (June 21, 1819).

Unable to read, nor to focus his mind on any one thought for long (a condition which explains, in part, the kaleidoscopic collage of "Ad Angelo Mai"), Leopardi began consuming himself with his own passion. Despite all the pent-up, explosive energy behind his caged aspirations, by July they had virtually disappeared from sight. In their place came a more desperate form of desperation, one that wiped out all traces of hope and self-esteem. The letter to Giordani of July 26 describes how this feeling of doom in the face of physical and psychological obstacles

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sparked an attempt to escape from home:

[...] non potendo vivere se non in questa condizione e con questa salute, non voglio vivere, e potendo vivere altrimenti, bisogna tentare. E il tentare così com'io posso, cioè disperatamente e alla cieca, non mi costa più niente, ora che le antiche illusioni sul mio valore, e sulle speranze della vita futura, e le imprese da togliere, e la gloria da conseguire, mi sono sparite dagli occhi, e non mi stimo più nulla [...].

These words reveal the full significance of the canzone's third stanza. In particular, they show how the verse "scuro m'è l'avvenire," functions on both literal and metaphoric levels to highlight the relationship between Leopardi's failing sight and his loss of hope in the future. Unable to realize his projects and to participate fully in Mai's glorious humanistic Renaissance, his heroic aspirations — indistinguishable from those of his patria — vanished into the thin air of illusions.

In addition to destroying hopes for his own future and that of Italy, Leopardi's poor vision, coupled with his father's stifling supervision, essentially destroyed the only screens protecting him from the pain of existence and the even more destructive, painless pain of boredom ("né schermo alcuno ho dal dolor [...]"). Important to the canzone in question, so weighed down and immobilized by fatigue and hopelessness, is the letter of November 19. Written after the failure of his escape attempt, this letter shows how, in the months following, the sense of a surrender to "noia" became even more solid and pervasive:

Sono cosi stordito del niente che mi circonda, che non so come abbia forza di prender la penna per rispondere alla tua del primo. Se in questo momento impazzissi, io credo che la mia pazzia sarebbe di seder sempre cogli occhi attoniti, colla bocca aperta, colle mani tra le ginocchia, senza ridere né piangere, né muovermi altro che per forza dal luogo dove mi trovassi. Non ho più lena di concepire nessun desiderio, neanche della morte, non perch'io la tema in nessun conto, ma non vedo più divario tra la morte e questa mia vita, dove non viene più a consolarmi neppure il dolore. Questa è la prima volta che la noia non solamente mi opprime e stanca, mi mi affanna e lacera come un dolor gravissimo; e sono cosi spaventato delle vanità di tutte le cose, e della condizione degli uomini, morte tutte le passioni, come sono spente nell'animo mio, che ne vo fuori di me, considerando ch'è un niente anche la mia disperazione.

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Here we find the personal source behind so many verses in the canzone which portray the present or "modern" age as one of complete paralysis, from cradle to tomb. It is also the source for Leopardi's theory of "noia" (and the related thoughts on "piacere") developed in so many familiar passages of the Zibaldone. Forced into boredom by his inability to read and write (painlessly) and unable to travel or provide for himself, Leopardi came face to face with his demons. The form of madness described in this letter proves his own theory that as soon as man stops working he becomes paralyzed by inactivity, assailed both by greater desires (fame, glory, freedom) and by the more destructive realization of the "vanità di tutte le cose" (Zibaldone, 172-173).

Denied, seemingly forever, the chance of joining his heroes in glory, Leopardi considered not only himself, but also his contemporaries (all but Angelo Mai, that is) as unworthy, ungrateful successors to the "Anime prodi" of Italy's ancient past (vv. 38-43). 6 As is seen in the passage from the third to the fourth stanzas, and repeated in the poem's final verses, the poet and his "secol di fango" are so paralyzed by idleness and indifference that they are unable to dig up the (com)passion needed to assist Mai in resurrecting the heroic voices from oblivion: "Bennato ingegno, or quando altrui non cale / de ' nostri alti parenti, / a te ne caglia" (vv. 46-48); "O scopritor famoso / segui, risveglia i morti / poi che dormono i vivi" (vv. 175-177). As these verses suggest, the stress on Italy's lack of both the desire to emulate its heroes and to feel ashamed in comparison ("né rossor, né invidia"), serves to negate the canzone's final hope ("tanto che in fine / questo secol di fango ο

vita agogni / e sorga ad atti illustri, ο si vergogni," vv. 178-180). If

repentance has disappeared along with heroism, how can Mai alone

revive a dead century?

"O famoso scopritor" (stanzas 5-12)

To approach an answer to the question just posed, a comparison must

be made here between "Ad Angelo Mai" and Leopardi's more

celebrated idyll, "L'infinito." Like the final letter to Giordani quoted

above, this poem was written in the fall of 1819, during this most

desolate of times in the poet's life. Though the first part of the canzone

to Mai blends easily into the backdrop of the poet's biography,

"L'infinito" stands out as an isolated, miraculous moment of beauty and

pleasure in the dismal year of 1819. In the idyll, in contrast to the

'Ad Angelo Mai' 33

canzone's beginning, dark as the most personal of letters, obstacles to sight ("questa siepe, che da tanta parte / dell'ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude") are viewed in a positive light for their ability to inspire the imagination and revive, almost without effort, "l'eterno e le morti stagioni." Limits are transcended naturally and without the help of heroes, past and present merge seamlessly into one and the surrender is sweet. Clearly the memory of the ancients revived by Mai does not have the same effect as the hedge or the wind blowing through the leaves on the poet. Instead of reviving the voices of the past it emphasizes the isolation of the present and leads to a surrender — to oblivion, to tedium — which is far from sweet.

If, on the other hand, poetry is given more importance than philosophical history in the reading of the second part of the canzone, it would seem that even in the face of truth, the illusions of "l'italo canto" are able to revive the experience of "L'infinito." In contrast to the poem's dark and doubtful beginnings, the central stanzas seem to suggest that the experience of writing his first idyll brightened the misery of 1819 and counteracted Leopardi's self-professed transformation from philosopher to poet.7 It is here that the poet, leaving Mai's discoveries aside, wakes up from his slumber and tries to pull his century out of the mud by evoking the aid of his own poetic heroes.

If we step back and observe Leopardi's pageant of great Italians, Columbus stands out as the only non-poet of the group. He is action separated from higher moral or artistic concerns. Glorious in themselves, the Ligurian's discoveries are significant in the context of the canzone because, by exposing the limits of the world, they signal the beginning of the conquest of imagination by "conoscenza." As they move from the dawn of the new era to its imminent end, from the infinite immensity of sea and sky to the defined uniformity of the world's map, the two stanzas devoted to Columbus almost in and of themselves tell the sad "storia del genere umano." 8 By favoring the definite over the infinite, scientific knowledge is seen to strip the world of the natural illusions which delighted the childhood of the human race. No longer a passive bystander, here the poet shouts out his condemnation of the recent turn of history: "Ahi ahi, ma conosciuto il mondo non cresce, anzi si scema, e assai più vasto / l'etra sonante e l'alma terra e il mare / al fanciullin, che non al saggio appare" (vv. 87-90). Because they make the unknown known and sever us from our dreams, Columbus's "discoveries" lead to a vision of history which

Christina Ball 34

accentuates the desolation of the modern age, an age in which the entire

universe, instead of expanding into the infinite, collapses into a tiny

map:

Nostri sogni leggiadri ove son giti dell'ignoto ricetto d'ignoti abitatori, ο del diurno degli astri albergo, e del rimoto letto della giovane Aurora, e del notturno occulto sonno del maggior pianeta? Ecco svaniro a un punto, e figurato è il mondo in breve carta; ecco tutto è simile, e discoprendo solo il nulla s'accresce (vv. 91-100).

The paradox evident in these verses, which will form the crux of Leopardi's thoughts on the indefinite-infinite, is that seeing too little is infinitely better than seeing too much. Taken to the extreme, knowledge ("discoprendo") dissipates the distances and the mysteries which give the world its fullness, and life its sweetness. The shift in the quality and quantity of the adjectives here in itself tells the story of the world's disintegration into nothingness and makes the poet's opinion as clear as day. Favorable, expansive terms which characterize the ubi sunt ("leggiadro," "ignoto," "rimoto," "giovane," "occulto," "maggior") are sucked up into the "nulla's" black hole, leaving in their wake a minuscule, nondescript world in which "tutto è simile."

Even more significant is the second transition of this stanza, when the poet turns away from history (or its apocalyptic end) and appeals to his own imagination in terms of endearment:

A noi ti vieta il vero appena è giunto, ο caro immaginar; da te s'apparta nostra mente in eterno; allo stupendo poter tuo primo ne sottraggon gli anni; e il conforto peri dei nostri affanni (vv. 91-105).

Reminiscent of his idyll's "sempre caro mi fu," these verses contain the

first hint that all is not lost. The negative powers of the "vero" are

weakened by the personification of the poet's "caro immaginar," a

poetic device which, in the context of the canzone, serves to affirm the

'Ad Angelo Mai' 35

"stupendo poter" of this most timeless of heroes. By conjuring up the maker of illusions herself, Leopardi gives poetic truth to one of his most recent discoveries: "Pare un assurdo, e pure è esattamente vero, che, tutto il reale essendo un nulla, non v'è altro di reale né altro di sostanza al mondo che le illusioni" (Zibaldone, 88, 8 January 1820). When the world has disintegrated into dust, nothing is more real, nor more comforting, than our own illusions. Only imagination, which is the source of all poetic knowledge, can conceivably counteract history with its power to reanimate even the deadest of centuries.

When Columbus's discoveries are considered alongside those of Ariosto in the following stanza, it becomes evident that these two central figures represent a sort of contrast or struggle between the definite and the infinite, between hope and desperation, between scientific and poetic knowledge, between truth and illusion. It is significant that, after the so-called end of the world, Leopardi does not give in to truth and silence. Instead he boldly crosses this turning point in history with a renewed appeal to imagination.9 Dissolved by truth in the previous stanza, the "sogni leggiadri" of the world's childhood are rediscovered in the poetry of Ariosto:

Nascevi ai dolci sogni intanto, e il primo sole splendeati in vista, cantor vago dell'arme e degli amori, che in età della nostra assai men trista empièr la vita di felici errori: nova speme d'Italia. Ο torri, ο celle,

ο donne, ο cavalieri, ο giardini, ο palagi! a voi pensando,

in mille vane amenità si perde la mente mia (vv. 106-15).

These verses stand out as the first (and perhaps only) clear sign of the possible transcendence of poetry over history. In contrast to the first-person reference which characterized the first part of the canzone ("Io son distrutto [...]"), here Leopardi offers an alternative to desperation in the hopeful poetic illusions of Ariosto. Like the idyll, a sweet song isolated in a year of sorrow, these verses flash out of the dusty darkness of the canzone as if to announce that even in the case of a man blinded by truth and suffering poetry is still able to work its magic. Remembering the "felici errori" of Ariosto's poem, he is pulled into a sea of "mille vane amenità," reminiscent of the "dolce naufragar" of his first idyll. Like the "caro immaginar," the many and diverse illusions of

Christina Ball 36

the Orlando Furioso seem more real than the "cantor vago" who gave

them life. Imagining his own audience of knights and ladies, towers and

gardens, it is to them that Leopardi exclaims his proof of their

continued powers ("O torri, ο celle, / ο donne [...] a voi pensando"). But

the question remains. Are these illusions real enough to cover what has

been stripped bare, to breathe, again, new life into Italy?

Now that the world — and its language — have been stripped of all

verdant illusions, the poet's only task can be that of providing an

alternative to the desolate truths of history, of populating the "inabitata

piaggia" of the world with illusions of the infinite and isolated poetic

acts of freedom.10 Tasso and Alfieri conclude the poetic history of the

canzone to Mai. Like Dante and Petrarch, Columbus and Ariosto, these

two, very different modern heroes portray the tension or struggle —

between melancholy and patriotic enthusiasm, imprisonment and

freedom — which was ruling Leopardi's own life at the time.

Sentimental and affectionate, the two stanzas devoted to Tasso reiterate

the pessimism of 1819 ("Ombra reale e salda ti parve il nulla," vv. 130-

1),11 while struggling to transcend it. As death becomes more solid and

real in its promise to end the misery, the desire to live becomes more

precious, more necessary than ever.12 When Leopardi calls his romantic

hero back from the dead, he seems to be expressing his own will to

emerge from his own misfortune and grasp life ("Torna torna da noi,

sorgi dal muto / e sconsolato avello," vv. 136-7). The "risorgimento" of

the poet is strengthened by his identification with Alfieri, that modern

hero whose writings waged a solitary war against tyranny. The words

of consolation spoken to this "Allobrogo feroce," ("Vittorio mio, questa

per te non era / età né suolo [...]") could just as easily be spoken to the "poeta marchegiano" who no doubt viewed himself as isolated in a sea of mediocrity, weighed down by the apathy of his time and place. Just like Alfieri, his only way to fight back and challenge the times is by applying his heroic spirit to writing. 1 3 To repeat the message of the canzone's dedicatory epistle: in the absence of great actions, there must be great words.

This is the other discovery which the canzone announces, one which in the end merges with those of philosophy and philology to transcend the brutal truths of history. By resurrecting the heroic roots of the not-so-ancient past, Leopardi gives us a further example of poetry's power to move and to shake, to provide a respite from "noia" and instill a sense of pride in an apathetic nation. Indeed, it is the poet,

not the philologist, who by this point has earned the title of "famoso

scopritor." The true subject of the poem, his discoveries prove far more

potent than Mai's manuscripts in reviving the "lingua spenta" of Italy.

If the final verses bring the reader back around to the beginning, it

is not without a new awareness of the options. Now that death is no

longer a heroic way out, the question remaining is "how will we live?"

As the final verses state, if it is not possible to rise up out of the mud

to "atti illustri," then humility is the best way to affirm life and lend it

solid meaning. Both an act of humility and of heroism, a song of

slumber and of reawakening, "Ad Angelo Mai" lets us hear, again, the

voice of an Italian poet unwilling to go quietly into the grave.

CHRISTINA BALL

Yale University,

New Haven, Connecticut

NOTES

1 The letter to Pietro Giordano of 8 August 1817 challenges the accuracy of Leopardi's chronology: "Ma mi fa infelice primieramente l'assenza della salute [...]. L'altra cosa che mi fa infelice è il pensiero. Io credo che voi sappiate, ma spero che on abbiate provato, in che modo il pensiero possa cruciare a martirizzare una persona che pensi alquanto diversamente dagli altri, quando l'ha in balia, voglio dire quando la persona non ha alcun svagamento e distrazione." 2 "Il titolo della seconda inedita si è trovato fortunatamente inocentissimo. Si tratta di un Monsignore. Ma mio padre non s'immagina punto che sotto quel titolo si nasconda una Canzone piena di orribile fanatismo." Letter to Pietro Brighenti, 28 April 1820 (Storia 163). Though this "fanatismo" is generally understood in the political and patriotic sense (i.e., Binni, 111), it could also refer to Leopardi's obsession with his newly discovered pessimistic vision of life. 3 The first to use this term was Francesco De Sanctis, whose reading of the canzone stresses the ways in which it transcends history's schemes: "La canzone è un primo poema del mondo, così com'è visto dal giovine. È come una filosofia della storia, dove tutto è coordinato, come in uno schema. Ha perciò un carattere generale, che trascende Atene, Roma, Italia: intravvedi la storia del mondo in una storia particolare, tutto il cielo in un pezzo di cielo" (p. 119). For a more recent reading of "Ad Angelo Mai" in terms of his poetic philosophy of

'Ad Angelo Mai' 37

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history, see the article by John Alcorn and Dario Del Puppo, "Historical Poetics in 'Ad Angelo Mai'." 4 Marco Santagata discusses the innovative significance of the "rima baciata" in "Ad Angelo Mai" and its connections to Leopardi's "crisis" in Quella celeste naturalezza (Bologna: il Mulino, 1994), pp. 111-17. 5 In the words of another Italian poet: "l'Angelo Mai [...] è la poesia colla quale il Leopardi dà la prima originale prova di avere perfetta coscienza dei suoi tempi, è il primo tentativo d'un'impresa che si andrà perfezionando in tutta la sua opera" (107). 6 One is reminded here, especially in the passage from "voi" to "io" to "noi," of Leopardi's meditations (some dating from the same January, 1820), on the difference between the sacrificial and communal "eroismo" of the ancients and the more self-centered "egoismo" of the moderns (i.e., Zibaldone, 104). In the first part of the canzone to Mai, Leopardi appears to be somewhat in-between these two positions, a hero forced — by his own sufferings and those of his patria — to view the world from the inside out. More explicit in their identification/condemnation of the "egoismo" of the present are the verses dedicated to Tasso: "Ο caro, / chi ti compiangerla, / se, fuor che di se stesso,

altri non cura?" (vv. 141-3). 7 See Folin (pp. 18-28) where he stresses the importance of "L'infinito" to "Ad

Angelo Mai" and explains how both are united by the same tragedy imminent

in the act of seeing. Whereas "L'infinito" restores, through poetic language, "la

totalità dello sguardo" which has otherwise been lost, "Ad Angelo Mai," focuses instead on this loss and the melancholy which ensues (p. 22). 8 The first "operetta morale" Columbus-like discoveries start a similar chain of dissatisfaction and "noia" in the human race and lead, in the end, to the dominion of "Verità": "Andavano per la terra visitando lontanissime contrade, poiché lo potevano fare agevolmente, per essere i luoghi piani, e non divisi da mari, né impediti da altre difficoltà; e dopo non molti anni, i più di loro si avvidero che la terra, ancorché grande, aveva termini certi [...]. Per le quali cose cresceva la loro mala contentezza di modo che essi non erano ancora usciti dalla gioventù, che un espresso fastidio dell'esser loro gli aveva universalmente occupati" (Poesie e prose, pp. 5-6). Quite different is the "Dialogo di Cristofero Colombo e di Pietro Gutierrez," where Columbus, less concerned with discovering land and limits, views the essential benefit of his voyage as that of providing a temporary liberation from "noia." Cfr. "Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica," for Leopardi's early reflections on science's "scoperta" of the secrets of nature. An important eighteenth-century precursor to Leopardi's philosophy of human history is that of Giambattista Vico. In his Scienza nuova as in his Study Methods, Vico praises the poetic childhood of man and condemns the barbarism of modern science, though he lists Columbus and Galileo among his heroes in the "De mente heroica." 9 Relevant to the role of Columbus and Ariosto in the heroic history of "Ad

Angelo Mai" is the passage in the Zibaldone (392-393, 8 December 1820) in which the fifteenth century is seen as a threshold in both political and literary history. When Italy's republic is replaced by a monarchy, the resulting lack of freedom leads to a progressive decline in the quality (originality, inventiveness) of poetry. The glory days of Dante and Petrarch are followed by the "sonno del quattrocento," a slumber which is ended, in part, by the literary "risorgimento" of the Cinquecento. But because of its emphasis on words instead of ideas and things, Leopardi considered even the age of Ariosto as inferior to the Trecento. Alfieri alone is named as an exception to this decline, "dovuta al suo spirito libero, e contrario a quello del tempo, e alla natura de' governi sotto cui visse." Leopardi's own canzone, whose poetic history concludes with Alfieri, could thus be viewed as an attempt to revive the original spirit of Italian poetry, while giving it the philosophical substance needed to survive modern times: "Chiunque vorrà far bene all'Italia, prima di tutto dovrà mostrarle una lingua filosofica, senza la quale io credo ch'ella non avrà mai letteratura moderna sua propria" (Letter to Giordani, 13 July 1821). Cfr. "Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica": "un Dante un Petrarca un Ariosto appena è credibile che rinasca" (Poesie e prose, 388). 10 A key passage for Leopardi's understanding of the connection between Italy's decline and the attrition of its native tongue is found in the "Discorso di un italiano sopra la poesia romantica": "[...] in questa medesima età spettatrice del lutto e del giubilo dell'Italia spogliata e rivestita, pur troppo vedo corrotta la lingua, il che non è mai scompagnato della corruttela del gusto [...] vedo languido e pressoché spento l'amore di questa patria; vedo gran parte degli italiani vergognarsi d'esser compatrioti di Dante e del Petrarca e dell'Ariosto e dell'Alfieri e di Michelangelo e di Raffaello e di Canova" (Poesie e prose, 424). 11 Cfr. "Io era spaventato nel trovarmi in mezzo al nulla, un nulla io medesimo. Io mi sentiva come soffocare, considerando e sentendo che tutto è nulla, solido nulla" (Zibaldone, 85, 1819). 12 Leopardi explains this paradox in the Zibaldone (137, 138) with the example of his own "near-death" experience. His new appreciation for life was sparked by a letter he received from Giordani (18 June 1820) in which his friend begged him to accept death as the only "bene," the only peaceful end to his sufferings. 13 Alfieri is given as an example of the evolution of writing from action in the operetta morale, "Il Parini ovvero della gloria": "Anzi niun ingegno è creato dalla natura agli studi; né l'uomo nasce a scrivere, ma solo a fare. Perciò veggiamo che i più degli scrittori eccellenti, e massime de' poeti illustri, di questa medesima età; come, a cagione di esempio, Vittorio Alfieri, furono da principio inclinati straordinariamente alle grandi azioni: alle quali ripugnando i tempi, e forse anche impediti dalla fortuna propria, si volsero a scrivere cose grandi" (Poesie e prose, 85).

'Ad Angelo Mai' 39

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Rizzoli, 1982. Santagata, Marco. Quella celeste naturalezza: Le canzoni e gli idilli di

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