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Sadness and despondency returned. His hand sought in his pocket for the little volume of Leopardi which he had taken out with him. On that king of pessimists, that prince of all despairs, he had just spent half an hour among the olives. Could renunciation of life and contempt of the human destiny go further? Well, Leopardi's case was not his. It was true, what he had said to Chide.
We turn instinctively in thought to Leopardi's musings on man's destiny at war with unknown nature-forces and malignant rulers of the universe. Omai disprezza Te, la natura, il brutto Poter che, ascoso, a comun danno impera, E l' infinita vanit
The exhibited autographs include Titian's hand large and forcible; Leopardi's, very neat; Goldoni's, delicate and self-conscious; Galileo's, much in earnest; and a poem by Tasso with myriad afterthoughts. But the one idea of the custodian is to get you to admire the famous Grimani Breviary not alas! in the original, which is not shown, but in a coloured reproduction.
Leopardi's Italian and Schopenhauer's German are far superior to those of the optimistic philosophers; and one of the most polished poems of our day is poor Thomson's "City of Dreadful Night." So, too, the poet who declares himself an idler and a vagabond gives the lie to his pretensions by the labour he takes to clothe them in unimpeachable verse.
They were very little things that told her of his sadness an unfinished sentence ending in a dash, the fall of half a dozen harmonious words that were like a beautiful verse and vaguely reminded her of Leopardi's poetry small touches here and there which had either never slipped from his pen before, or which she had never noticed. They pleased her.
In addition to what I have already said of Leopardi's political catechism, which the archbishop forced upon the people, I may note that this work took great pains to show that no education was needed save just enough to enable each man to accomplish his duties within the little sphere in which he was born, and that for the great body of the people education was a curse rather than a blessing.
The government had a Turkish or Russian fear of printed matter. A wretched barber was fined 1000 ducats for having in his possession a volume of Leopardi's poems, which was described as 'contrary to religion and morals.
While the names of Braccio, his master in the art of war, and of Piccinino, his great adversary, are familiar to few but professed students, no one who has visited either Bergamo or Venice can fail to have learned something about the founder of the Chapel of St. John and the original of Leopardi's bronze.
The song she had chosen was a fine setting of some words selected from Leopardi's grand Ode to Italy: "O patria mia, vedo le mura c gli archi E le colonne e i simula-cri e l'erme Torridegli avi nostri" This was recitative: then followed "Ma la gloria non vedo" a mournful melody, a rhythmic plaint.
Leopardi's Italian it might be, for it was a very mottled or motley tongue, but he might as well have talked English or Double-Dutch to our hands, or better, for they had picked up the meaning of some orders from me before I got used to their lingo. And then he says 'tis office work and superintendence he understands. How can you superintend, I told him, what you don't know yourself?
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