On 7 and 8 January 2025, a new television miniseries entitled “Leopardi – The poet of the infinite“, dedicated to the life of the famous poet Giacomo Leopardi. The miniseries, directed by Sergio Rubinioffers an unprecedented and historically coherent portrait of the great writer from Recanati, highlighting not only his poetic genius, but also the depth, the passions, the rebellions and the political ideals that characterized his short – but intense – life, always in the name of strong desire for emancipation that characterized her. The great poet was often perceived as a pessimist, due to the themes of suffering and unhappiness which reign supreme in his works. But it wasn’t just that: his works deeply explored the human conditiontrying to understand the causes of unhappiness and proposing solidarity with each other in the face of adversity.
- 1Early life and works of Leopardi, child prodigy
- 2Puberty and illness
- 3The works of adult Leopardi
- 4The last years, death and burial in Naples
Early life and works of Leopardi, child prodigy
Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco Salesio Saverio Pietro Leopardi (yes, he had six names!), the first of ten children, was born on 29 June 1798 in Recanati into one of the most noble families in the country. The parents, who were cousins, were very attentive to their children’s education, and this detail was the basis of Giacomo’s literary career. His mother Adelaide Antici she was a very religious woman with a “hard” character, sometimes almost “affective”, as is recalled in the memoirs of the poet, who throughout his childhood suffered from not having received enough love and affection from her. Following risky speculations on the part of her father, Adelaide took it upon herself to manage the family fortune to avoid falling into the abyss due to debts, and this entailed a significant domestic economy from which all the children suffered. Nonetheless, their children never lacked the resources to study.
His very first education came thanks to a Jesuit and an abbot, who taught him Latin, theology, the fundamentals of philosophy and science, but above all they created a model of study that was useful to him throughout his life. For Giacomo, however, this was not enough, and he began to study some of the approximately 20,000 books in his father’s library.
Between 1809 and 1812 he began to compose the body of what will be defined as his Childish worksa collection of texts of various kinds (poems, translations and essays) that reflect the young man’s early erudition and cultural education. Despite their youthful nature, they already show the author’s exceptional literary talent and in-depth knowledge of the classics, without disdaining his passion for jokes in verse (here directed at his brothers).
From that period until 1816 Leopardi devoted himself to what he defined bluntly as «a crazy and desperate study»: he learned Latin, ancient Greek perfectly, some hints of Sanskrit, a little Hebrew, French, English, Spanish and German, since the translation work particularly intrigued him.
In 1813, at the age of 15, he wrote History of astronomybased on Bailly’s work of the same name, which traces the evolution of astronomical science from its origins to 1811, including updates absent in Bailly’s work such as the discovery of Ceres, Pallas, Juno and the comet of 1811. L Learning French was very useful to him in composing this writing, because Leopardi read closely Abrégé d’Astronomie Of Jerome Lalande and the Dictionnaire de Physique of Aimé-Henri Paulian which he found on the shelves of his father’s much-loved bookshop.
In the same period Leopardi also began working on translations of Latin and Greek (both spontaneous and commissioned), and four years later he made his debut as a poet, publishing in The Italian Spectator his Hymn to Neptune and two Greek odes complete with Latin translation.
Puberty and illness
In 1815 Leopardi, who had always been in poor health, he began to feel seriously ill: the years spent hunched over books and genetics were starting to take their toll on him. The first problems were of a rheumatic nature, combined with an incipient scoliosis and psychological problems caused by long periods of study in isolation. Little by little, his eyes suffered from this, becoming more and more alien to his sight.
The actual illness affected him with lung problems and severe fevers which caused a strong deviation of his spine – hence his famous “double hump” – which brought with it a series of problems that afflicted him throughout his life (cough, reduced lung capacity and shortness of breath, excessive tiredness, circulatory and intestinal problems). Not even his legs escaped the painssuffering from tremors and paresthesias in the coldest moments. In short, there was not a part of the young man’s body that emerged unscathed, but what suffered the most was certainly his spirit, which did not want to accept a body bent by illness. Not even 18 years old he believed he would surely dieif not for the pain of seeing his studies so reduced (he had in fact had to significantly reduce his studies due to tired eyesight).
He spoke about all these health problems in a song, The approach of deathand later also in the Memoriesdefining the disease as a «blind sickness» which led him several times towards suicidal thoughts.
According to Pietro Citati (doctor who treated him in Recanati) and other doctors, Leopardi would have suffered either from Pott’s disease (a bony tuberculosis, also known as “tuberculous spondylitis” from which another well-known figure on the Italian political and literary scene, Antonio Gramsci, also suffered) or juvenile ankylosing spondylitisan autoimmune rheumatic syndrome that leads to a progressive ossification of the vertebral ligaments with deformation and rigidity of the spine, and which also leads to other inflammatory disorders of the eyes and nerves.
There is no doubt that this terrible situation led him to a series of depressive crises that they would never abandon him again, and influenced his philosophical pessimism which then led him to investigate the roots of human suffering and the meaning of life.
The works of adult Leopardi and the Infinite
In 1817 Leopardi was 19 years old, and was preparing to begin compiling the Zibaldonewhich until 1832 would see his reflections, philological notes and ideas for works noted down.
Something had changed: his position towards Romanticism. In fact, the young man had always opposed this current, defending the classical tradition. In that moment of youth, however, he integrated romantic elements into his poetics, such as the exploration of relationship between finite and infinite el’attention to interiority and imagination. This approach is evident above all in works such as The infinitewhere romantic themes blend with his personal vision. In this work – his best known – Leopardi expresses the sense of infinity and the idea of an immensity that goes beyond human limits, arousing a profound feeling of contemplation and fusion with the universe. In these pages the poet describes a lonely hill which, darkening the horizon, allows the imagination to roam without boundaries.
At that age, however, Leopardi just wanted get out of the four walls where he had been confined (or where, according to other points of view, he had self-confined), and so in 1819 he planned to escape, obtaining a passport for the Kingdom of Lombardy-Veneto. However, his father found out and the plan failed. In fact, his father told him that if he had left of his own free will he would not have received a penny to support himself, and so he remained, although afflicted, in his parents’ home.
The Leopardi pessimism that we know today took root at that moment: the young author began to reflect on the vanity of hopes and the inevitability of pain, and in that movement of feelings he began to compose the songs that would be published under the name of Idylls and to write The infinite.
In 1822, however, a glimmer of freedom arrived: his parents had in fact given him permission to go to Rome, hosted by his maternal uncle. The city, however, negatively surprised the young Leopardi, who described it as corrupt and squalid. He returned home a few months later. In 1825 he moved to Milan with the task of directing the complete edition of Cicero’s works and other editions of Latin and Italian classics. The air of the metropolis, however, made him feel too ill, and so he moved first to Bologna, then to Florence and Pisa, and then returned home in the summer of 1828 due to health problems, where he remained until 1830.
It was precisely in 1828 that he composed the famous poem “To Silvia” (included in You sing), melancholy ode probably dedicated to Teresa Fattorinithe young daughter of the coachman of the Leopardi house in Recanati. She was a simple girl of humble origins who died around the age of twenty (it is thought from tuberculosis), and who became for Leopardi the symbol of the fragility of life and the end of youthful hopescentral themes in poetry. The figure of Silvia is therefore emblematic, because she represents the transience of existence and the impossibility of realizing one’s dreams.
The last years, death and burial in Naples
When Leopardi was in Florence, he formed a solid friendship (and perhaps even more) with Antonio RanieriNeapolitan exile and Freemason, future senator of the Kingdom of Italy, which resulted in a very close correspondence in times of distance.
At the end of the summer of 1833 Leopardi received a considerable sum of money from his parents, and immediately left for Naples with Ranieri, in the hope that that warm city would benefit his health.
Meanwhile the Moral operettas (a collection of 24 prose poems on human existence, unhappiness and man’s relationship with nature finished in 1832) underwent censorship by the Bourbon authorities, which was followed by placed on the Index of prohibited books after the papal censorship, due to the materialistic ideas and contrary to the doctrine of the Church exposed in some “dialogues”. In those pages, in fact, Leopardi questioned theanthropocentrism and criticized the optimism of human progress.
In those years the poet dedicated himself to writing satires and lyrics, but his health did not improve, and on June 14, 1837 he died (not even 39 years old) due to pulmonary dropsy, i.e. the accumulation of fluids in the chest and lungs.
At that time the plague had invaded the whole cityand his friend Ranieri feared that his friend’s body would be thrown into a mass grave due to the strict health regulations in force. So he hastened to contact a trusted surgeon friend who could declare through an autopsy that Leopardi had not died from the plague. After the investigation, Leopardi’s remains were buried in the crypt and then in the atrium of the church of San Vitale (now Church of the Good Shepherd), in Fuorigrotta.
However, during an official reconnaissance of the remains in 1900, they emerged doubts about the authenticity of the remains attributed to Leopardi. In particular, it was noted theabsence of the skull in the tomb, fueling suspicions about the real identity of the bones. Some hypothesized that Ranieri had lied about the burial and that he had hidden the bones who knows where (thus staging an empty coffin funeral with the complicity of the parish priest), while others suggested that the remains may have been confused or dispersed during restoration work in the church. Despite this, the professor who studied the bone remains found in the coffin observed that the spine and sternum were both deviated, and that they could belong to the poet.
In 1939, at Mussolini’s wish, Leopardi’s remains were transferred to the Park Vergiliano in Piedigrottawhere they still rest.
