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The Canti

With a Selection of His Prose

Giacomo Leopardi

Translated by J.G. Nichols

Cover Picture of The Canti
Categories: 19th Century, Italian
Imprint: Fyfield Books
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (192 pages)
(Pub. Apr 2003)
9781857546941
£12.95 £11.65
  • Description
  • Excerpt
  • Translator
  • Contents
  • I sit by night, and see the distant stars
    High in the clear blue sky
    Flame down upon this melancholy waste,
    And see them mirrored by
    The distant sea, till all this universe
    Sparkles throughout its limpid emptiness.
        (from 'The Broom or The Flower of the Desert')

    Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) was the greatest Italian poet after Petrarch and one of the great prose writers of the nineteenth century. Caught between devotion to the classical past and a sense of the impoverished present, Leopardi rejected both the Catholicism of his childhood and Enlightenment optimism. In his world, all that we love and value is illusory, and therefore to be loved the more. His existential resolve makes him the most compelling of Italian poets.

    Here is the essential introduction to the poems. J.G. Nicholls provides a translation of the complete Canti, explanatory notes, and a selection of Leopardi's prose, keyed to related poems. Further background is provided by Nicholls's introduction and a brief biography woven from Leopardi's own words.
    Table of Contents

    INTRODUCTION

    CANTI

    I To Italy

    II On the Proposed Monument to Dante in Florence

    III To Angelo Mai on the Occasion of his Discovery of some Books of Cicero's De Re Publica

    IV For the Wedding of his Sister Paolina

    V To a Victor in the Games

    VI Brutus

    VII To Spring or Of the Ancient Fables

    VIII Hymm to the Patriarchs or Of the Beginnings of the Human Race

    IX Sappho's Last Song

    X First Love

    XI The Solitary Thrush

    XII The Infinite

    XIII The Evening of the Holiday

    XIV To the Moon

    XV The Dream

    XVI The Solitary Life

    XVII Consalvo

    XVIII To his Lady

    XIX To Count Carlo Pepoli

    XX The Revival

    XXI To Silvia

    XXII Remembrances

    XXIII NIght Song of a Wandering Shepherd of Asia

    XXIV The Calm after the Storm

    XXV the Village Saturday

    XXVI The Dominant Thought

    XXVII Love and Death

    XXVIII To Himself

    XXIX Aspasia

    XXX Upon a Bas-relief on an Ancient Tomb showing a Daed Girl in the Act of Departing and Taking Leave of her Family

    XXXI On the Likeness of a Beautiful Lady Carved upon her Tomb

    XXXII Palinode to the Marchese Gino Capponi

    XXXIII The Setting of the Moon

    XXXIV The Broom or The Flower of the Desert

    XXXV Imitation

    XXXVI Jeu d'Esprit

    XXXVII Fragment (Hear me, Melissus...)

    XXXVIII Fragment ( Still walking up and down...)

    XXXIX Fragment (The ray of daylight...)

    XL Fragments: Fron the Greek of Semonides

    XLI Fragments: From the Same

    GIACOMO LEOPARDI 1798-1837

    J.G. Nichols
    ... read more
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