1807-1815

YOUNG STUDIES AND FIRST COMPOSITIONS

In 1807, Giacomo and his brothers were entrusted to Don Sebastiano Sanchini, who was chosen as the family tutor, but his brilliance soon led him to become independent in his studies. In absolute identification with his father's figure, Giacomo continued his studies until 1815 in various fields of knowledge, according to a fashionable encyclopaedic taste. He had a remarkable ability to put everything into verse.

In 1809, after reading Homer, he wrote the sonnet La morte di Ettore; in 1810, the poem I Re Magi; in 1811, the tragedy La virtù indiana; in 1812, the tragedy Pompeo in Egitto and the Epigrammi.

Young Leopardi read a lot of different stuff, studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and other modern languages, got into philology with translations and commentaries on the most famous classics, and studied geography, astronomy and natural sciences.
He wrote Storia dell'astronomia (History of Astronomy) in 1813 and Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi (Essay on the Popular Errors of the Ancients) in 1815..

1816

LITERARY CONVERSION

His reading of the classics revealed to him the leap in quality and substance between a poetry experienced inwardly and the poetic taste of the rhetorical tradition: the transition from erudition to literary study, from ideas to beauty, would lead to an absolute adherence to poetry as pure representation.

Giacomo intervened in the controversy over Romanticism which reached Recanati through rare periodicals, by writing a letter to the Biblioteca Italiana in response to the intervention of Madame de Staёl, who urged Italians to read and translate foreign authors. In this letter, which was never published, Leopardi rejected de Staёl's suggestion of translations, insisting that poetry did not come from the culture and study of authors, but from a “superhuman impulse”.

1816 was the year of the important translations of the first book of the Odyssey, the second of the Aeneid and the pseudo-Virgilian poem Moretum. It was also the year of two important poetic attempts by Giacomo: the idyll Le rimembranze in the spring and Appressamento della morte in November.

1817-18

CORRESPONDENCE WITH GIORDANI AND EARLY WORKS

In 1817 Giacomo began a correspondence with writer Pietro Giordani from Piacenza, who would soon become his favourite interlocutor. Leopardi wrote to him, explaining his plans, asking for advice, sending notes and visionary verses, complaining about the isolation of the Marca (his homeland), the narrowness and ignorance of the people of Recanati.

At the age of nineteen, the poet fell in love for the first time when he was struck by the sight of his cousin from Pesaro, Gertrude Cassi, during a brief visit to the palace. In just a few days, Giacomo wrote Il primo amore and Memorie del primo amore; in that year, he began to record the reflections that would later become the pages of his Zibaldone di pensieri, which would become the highest expression of Leopardi's vast mind, an acute study of human feelings, a thorough examination of the most varied subjects.
In 1818 he was inspired to write his first songs: All'Italia and Sopra il monumento di Dante.

Giordani visited him in Recanati and this visit strengthened in him the desire to leave Recanati, believing that he would find elsewhere what he lacked.

1819

THE ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE AND L’INFINITO

The poet's physical pains, caused by an illness contracted in his youth, flared up and his eye disease became increasingly incurable. He longed for wider horizons and was enlightened by the illusion of a « land full of wonders » that awaited him beyond Recanati, and by the growing dream of a glory that would redeem the suffering and deprivation he had endured.
To this end, he asked for and obtained a passport (necessary at the time) to travel to Milan, but when his father thwarted his plans, he resigned himself to renouncing his departure.

By abandoning religion and embracing the materialist theses of mechanics, the « philosophical conversion » culminates in the passage from beauty to truth: the discovery of the « solid nothingness » that reason offers man. The « poetry of the imagination » can only come from the ancients, and modern poetry is a « sentimental poetry » in which reason and philosophy cannot be dispensed with.

1819 is the year of L’infinito and di Alla Luna.

1820

ANCIENTS AND MODERNS

With an increasingly critical attitude towards the contemporary world, Giacomo developed the idea of a contrast between the ancients, capable of heroism, and the contemporaries, dead to any virtue.
The song Ad Angelo Mai and the idyll La sera del dì di festa date from this period; he worked on Il sogno and began the first sketches and notes for what was to become the Operette Morali.

1821

PHILOSOPHICAL SONGS

Leopardi composed some of his “philosophical speeches” in verse, the songs Nelle nozze della sorella Paolina, A un vincitore nel pallone, Bruto Minore and La vita solitaria.

1822-1824

THE ROMAN STAY

Regret for the primitive nature and the heartfelt echo of the imagination of the ancients led him to compose Alla Primavera and Inno ai Patriarchi. In May, he composed Ultimo canto di Saffo, which expresses the despair of those who feel unjustly excluded from the happiness of nature.

In the autumn, Monaldo gave Giacomo the permission to go to Rome, where he stayed with his uncle, the Marquis Carlo Antici. Full of hopes and plans, the poet was disappointed by the Roman experience: he was annoyed by the city, too large and noisy, dirty and unsafe; he was scandalized by the corruption and hypocrisy of the Curia; he was embittered by the insulting behaviour of writers and scholars. His only consolation was to visit the places dear to Torquato Tasso and to meet Angelo Mai, Niebuhr, Bunsen and Jacopssen.

He gladly returned to Recanati, where in 1823 he composed Alla sua donna. The following year he composed the greater part of the Operette Morali, a work of high philosophical content, sometimes disguised in a light and satirical veneer.
Despite the publication of some of his works, the poet was unknown to most Italians.

1825-1827

BOLOGNA, MILAN, FLORENCE

In 1825 Giacomo stopped in Bologna, where he was well received by the literary society. Here he saw Giordani again and met Pietro Brighenti, the editor of a literary journal.

He went on to Milan, where he worked with publisher Antonio Fortunato Stella and met Vincenzo Monti. This was a period of euphoria for Giacomo: the poet believed he could support himself outside Recanati, but his health remained uncertain. The poet returned from Milan on 29th September 1825 and stayed in the Emilian town until November of the following year.

He returned to Recanati and worked on the text Crestomazia della prosa e della poesia italiana that he had undertaken the previous year for publisher Stella. On 26th April 1827 he returned to Bologna, to friends who appreciated him and urged him to work. There he met Antonio Ranieri, a Neapolitan exile. They became close friends. In June 1827, at the same time as Manzoni's Promessi Sposi, the edition of the Operette Morali that Leopardi had sent to Stella was published in Milan.

On 21st June Giacomo moved to Florence, where he met and visited Vieusseux, Colletta, Capponi, Stendhal and Tommaseo. Leopardi met Manzoni, who would always remain deaf to the world and to the voice of the poet from Recanati. Giacomo wrote two other operettas, Dialogo di Plotino e di Porfirio and Il Copernico, to be included in the posthumous edition of 1845, and compiled the Indice del mio Zibaldone.
On 1st November, he moved to Pisa to spend the winter in a milder climate than Florence.

1828-1830

PISA, THE RETURN TO RECANATI AND THE LOVE FOR FANNY

Classical, enchanted and magical, Pisa seems to have been for Giacomo the most serene and the happiest period of his life: he felt within himself a rebirth of that poetic feeling which immediately finds expression in the exemplary canzonetta Il Risorgimento and, shortly afterwards, in the intense idyll A Silvia, in which the poet recalls his own lost youth through the portrayal of the beautiful Teresa Fattorini. It was in Pisa that he received the news of the untimely death of his brother Luigi, aged just 24.

Giacomo went to Florence for a few months and then returned to Recanati, where he stayed for about a year and a half. Suffering, resignation, despair, sweet melancholy; many things had changed in the family, and Giacomo lived with the ghosts of a past evoked with the despair of one who feels that everything is irretrievably lost. And it is in this tormented and conflicted state of mind that the great idylls are born: Le ricordanze, La quiete dopo la tempesta, Il sabato del villaggio, Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia.

He went to Bologna and then to Florence, where he met and fell in love with Fanny Targioni Tozzetti, to whom he would dedicate the Aspasia cycle a few years later. He began to write Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia and probably composed Il passero solitario.

1831

I CANTI AND WITH RANIERI IN ROME

The first edition of I Canti was published in Florence in April 1831. In October, Leopardi and Ranieri, who by then had become close friends, travelled to Rome to spend the winter in a milder climate and to look for work or a commission. Giacomo's hopes of getting something out of his old philological work were dashed.

1832

BACK TO FLORENCE

In March 1832, the poet returned to Florence with Ranieri. Leopardi's correspondence with his father Monaldo became more and more intense, full of respect but also of sincere affection, showing the complexity of the relationship that bound him to his father. In this year Leopardi composed his last two works of the Operette Morali: Dialogo di un venditore di almanacchi e di un passeggere and Dialogo di Tristano e di un amico. In December, having stopped writing at the Zibaldone, he devoted himself to writing one hundred and eleven Pensieri, the sum total of his philosophical reflections.
The climate in Florence, which had become unbearable for Leopardi, brought him back to Rome.

1833-1837

THE LAST YEARS: THE NAPLES EXPERIENCE

In October 1833, Giacomo and Ranieri moved to Naples. Attracted by the excellent climate of the region, Leopardi was impressed by the Neapolitan atmosphere, although culturally he was annoyed by the idealistic and Catholic tendencies that dominated the city. It was during these years that he wrote the cantos inspired by his love for Fanny: Consalvo, Il pensiero dominante, Amore e morte, Aspasia and A se stesso.

In 1835 the Neapolitan edition of the Canti was published by Starita. In January 1836, the first volume of the new Neapolitan edition of the Operette Morali was confiscated by the Bourbon censors, and the project to publish Leopardi's entire oeuvre with the aforementioned publisher fell through. Giacomo was sad and angry, and on this occasion he composed the chapter I nuovi credenti, an irreverent satire against the Neapolitan spiritualists. In April 1836, Leopardi and Ranieri moved to a small villa at the foot of Vesuvius, between Torre del Greco and Torre Annunziata. Here he wrote La ginestra, his poetic testament, and Il tramonto della luna, published posthumously in the Florentine edition of 1845.

In 1837 a cholera epidemic broke out in Naples and Leopardi, in constant discomfort, indulged in excesses and the abuse of sweets and ice-cream.
On 14th June 1837 he started to show signs of getting worse and died a few hours later, assisted by Ranieri, his sister Paolina and the doctor who had rushed to his bedside. In the house book, quoted at the beginning with the words of his father Monaldo about his birth, we read the following words written by his sister Paolina:

“On 14th June 1837, my beloved brother, who had become one of the first men of letters in Europe, died in the city of Naples: he was buried in the church of San Vitale on the road to Pozzuoli. Farewell, dear Giacomo: when shall we meet again in paradise?”