DIALOGUES OF LEOPARDI, The. Leopardi's philosophical paragraphs, known to Italians as the
morali' are mostly in dialogue form; but they are not, as regards sub stance, to be taken apart from the other prose works composed by him largely in 1824, pub lished first in 1827, and again with slight addi tions in 1832; nor apart from his 'Thoughts,' belonging to his later days in Naples, and his
Too little read by those who know Leo pardi only as a poet, the dialogues are, on the other hand, often overestimated as regards their philosophical value. Leopardi's pessimism is not a coherent system. His repudiation of justice, virtue, glory, patriotism, even of truth and love, is in reality an affirmation of these same objects as human ideals, though they are regarded by him as unattainable by man. What is con sidered, and what he states, as his °philosophy)) amounts, thus, only to a social satire that easily degenerates under his vehement bias into an unreasoning and not rarely ungracious scold. Leopardi borrows the principal phrases and some of the spirit of French mechanistic deism of the 18th century. Suppressing the absentee deity of that school — it was in truth a useless encumbrance in social reform—he has left on his hands a hollow lifeless world in which theoretically not even suicide is worth while i and which is not resilient enough for a tennis match between Atlas and Hercules. What be comes meanwhile of the humanitarianism, so productive in political and social consequence, that logically springs from the doctrines of French rationalism? This consequence Leo pardi, gritting his teeth, everywhere denies; but denies in words only; for humanitarianism re mains the universal trait in his deepest moods, just as it is the teaching, if moral there be, of his dialogues. says Nature to the Soul,
•be great and unhappy.° Greatness Leopardi defines as °living in ac cord with nature,° realizing the sublime °ex cellence° of which man discerns the potentiality within him. If the first phrase is a platitude of the French philosophasters, the second con cept embraces all the traditional formulae of classic and Christian ethics, abstracting, of course, the mystical virtues of faith. Hence the reactionary, aristocratic toryism of Leo pardi's misanthropy, his ridicule of pretended progress, of social reform, of scientific dis covery and applied inventiveness. These for him are so many phantoms, so many delusions with which cowardly, mean-souled mortals con sole themselves because they are afraid to look the miserable unredeemable lot of mankind un flinchingly in the face. In this destructive criticism of life Leopardi, it is apparent, holds no view of which the Catholic idealist of his time would not have approved. His pessimism is the point from which Manzoni starts to con struct an edifice of Christian hope, and Foscolo to seek a reason for existence in aesthetic con templation and artistic creation. Leopardi, on the contrary, spreads devastation around him self and then rages at its melancholy expanse. With folded arms he views from a superior pinnacle the bootless struggle of humanity for a goal (happiness) beyond its reach; and from his solitude he looks forward to a time when men have become extinct, with insects and beasts inheriting the earth, the sun itself grown cold and a dim moon performing purposeless revolu tions about a planet that is only a sepulchre.
If we put the dialogues in their true social and political tradition, we see how the republi can and socialistic movements based on French nationalism failed to redeem and integrate modern Italy. With their humanitarian impli cations never developed to self-consciousness, it was a sorry appeal indeed they had to make to a suffering but aspiring populace. The dia logues of Leopardi are representative of states of mind that contributed only negatively to the "Resurrection) of Italy. The positive forces are reflected with equal clearness in Manzoni's 'Betrothed.)