LEOPARDI, lit'..-pliedt% GIACOMO, Calla (1798-1837). An Italian poet, born at Recanati, .lone 29, 1798, of an old noble family then im poverished. Leopardi's childhood was a sad and loveless one, and from a very tender age he gave himself up with such energy to the study of the classics and of three or four modern languages, that he greatly impaired his health, delicate from early youth, and brought on those chronic ail ments that embittered all his later life. In 1817 he began his correspondence with Pietro Giordani, and to this same year belongs his first love affair, which inspired his first poems (I! prima ((more, Spent° it diurno raggio, and Io qui I:amine/0). A prey to an overpowering melancholy, he made an unsuccessful attempt to escape from his father's house in ISI9. In 1822, however, he ob tained leave to go to Rome. and then began a period of constant wandering to and fro, during wide') the poet, a prey to unceasing physical tor ments, found life to be a series of disenchant ments. Sojourning in Rome. AlHan, Bologna, Flor ence. Pisa, and at intervals in Recanati,he finally went. to Naples. where he died. June 14, 1837. Scantiness of money hampered him always, and his bodily infirmities prevented him from accept ing the independent position which he might have achieved. when his repute as a philologist prompted the statesman and scholar Bunsen to offer him a university professorship in Germany. A deep student of Greek and Latin. and conver sant also with French, Spanish, and English, Leopardi produced philological works notable for the time, but now, with the exception of the commentary on Petrarch, rather antiquated. In his earlier years he wrote Greek and Latin with nmeh more ease and precision than Italian, and it was only by a systematic study of the style of Italian classics that he later acquired skill in handling his native language. There are two periods recognizable in Leopardi's lyric activity. In the first of these, which extends from about 1816 to 1824, and embraces some twenty-two compositions approved by the author, his pes simism is first formed and developed, and he rests more particularly under the influence of the Latin classics; in the second period, which, after a couple of years given up to writing in prose, begins in 1820 and occupies the rest of his life, he carries his pessimism still further, and ends by affirming the universality of suffering.
A feature of this later poetic manner is a rather frequent imitation Petrarch. As to metrical structure, Leopardi was most inclined to the use of blank verse (rersi scio/ti), but in some of Ids best pieces he even employed internal rhyme; in general, his rhyme schemes are of an intricate nature. Of his various prose works the author gave his final approval only to the Operate mortal and a few of the Volyarizzamenti, the former being original works of a philosophic nature, and the latter In translations from the Greek. There appeared posthumously the prose Pensicri. His critical powers are best illustrated in his Grestomazia italiana, containing selected passages from the most representative Italian writers of every century. For a knowledge of the inner man, nothing is more important than the Epistotario, a collection of his letters extending from 1812 to a few days before his death, familiar in their style and notably sincere in tone.
Consult editions of the poems, All' Italia and Sul monument° di Dante (Rome, 1819) ; that of the Ad Angelo Mai (Bologna, 1820) ; the Canzoni dcl con te Gi(tromo Leopardi (ib., 1824) ; the l'ersi•del conic Giacomo Leopardi (ib., 1826) ; the Conti Giacomo Leopardi (Florence. 1831) ; the commentary by A. St raceali (2d ed., ib., 1895). The most complete editions are those of G. Chiarini (Florence, 1886) and of G. Mestica, (ib., 1886). The first edition of the Epistolario was that of Florence, 1549: consult the 5th ed. by G. Piergili. Florence, 1892. The best edi tions of the Operette moron (first published at .Milan, 1827) are those of G. C'hiarini (Leghorn. 1870) and G. Mestiea (Florence, IS89). Consult the commentaries by N. Zingarelli (Naples, 1895) and I. Della Giovanna (Florence, 1895). Bio graphical and critical treatises are: G. 1. :\lon tanari, Biagi-a/la dcl con tc Giacomo Leopardi (Rome. 1838) ; Saint-Beuve. Portraits content porains, vol. iy.; C. Rosa, Della ru/a c drlIc opere di Giacomo Leopardi (Ancona. 1380) A. Ranieri, Sett." anni di sadalizio con Giacomo Leopardi (Naples. ISSO) ; C. A. Traversi• Stud; su Giacomo Leopardi (ib.. 1SS7) : L. Cappelletti. Biblio gralia Leopa•diana (2d ed., Parma, 1882) ; F. De Sanetis, ,c4aggi eritiri and Nnori saggi critici (Naples, 1805. 1879) : T. Della Giovanna, La ragion poetic? (lei ('anti di Giacomo Leopardi (Verona. 1892) : G. A. Cesare°. muore riccrehe sir Giacomo Leopardi (Turin, 1893).