Giacomo Leopardi

Giacomo Leopardi, Count (June 29, 1798 – June 14, 1837) was a major Italian Romantic poet, often considered alongside Dante and Petrarch as Italy's greatest poets.

Early life

Born in Recanati, Italy, he was a son of Monaldo Leopardi, a minor nobleman of a small village in Marches that at the time was ruled by the papacy. Giacomo's mother was the marquise Adelaide Antici, and by all accounts, was a harsh and domineering woman. He grew up in practical isolation, with his father and a few priests as teachers. The father was extremely influential to the poet: perhaps a man of limited practical sense, he lost most of his patrimony in failed businesses, but assembled an expensive and extraordinary library that was opened to the public in 1812.

Related Topics:
Recanati - Italy - Marches - Papacy - Library - 1812

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Giacomo's loneliness, made worse by the formality of family manners (from the age of six, he was made to dress in black like his father), drove him into his father's library, where he read widely. By the age of ten he no longer needed tutors, and by the time he was 17 he had mastered many areas of knowledge. He later referred to this devotion to study as "seven years of mad and desperate study". Nevertheless, it resulted in a great knowledge of classical languages (he learned at least seven languages, including Hebrew), and also history, philosophy, philology, natural sciences, and astronomy. The long periods of study in an unhealthy environment may have contributed to his asthma and scoliosis, and his weak eyesight was attributed to reading by candlelight.

Related Topics:
Hebrew - History - Philosophy - Philology - Astronomy - Asthma - Scoliosis

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Leopardi began work as a translator (mainly of ancient classical works - notably a version of Horace's Ars Poetica in ottava rima). He also wrote some minor treatises such as a History of Astronomy (1813) and an essay on Essay on the Popular Errors of the Ancients (1815), both interesting works with plenty of curious facts and anecdotes. He also wrote a pseudo-Greek poem (Scherzi epigrammatici). In 1816 he wrote to the Biblioteca Italiana (literary magazine), defending the position of Italian classicists in answer to the famous assertions of Madame de Staël about translations and academic poetry. This was when he is considered to have passed "from erudition to beauty", from study to poetry and other composition, abandoning aseptic philology and the false taste of Arcadia in favor of a fresh neoclassical modern style.

Related Topics:
Horace - 1813 - 1815 - 1816 - Madame de Staël - Philology - Arcadia

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