Leopardi: Selected Poems

by Giacomo Leopardi, Eamon Grennan (Translator)

These translations of the major poems of Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) render into modern English verse the work of a writer who is widely regarded as the greatest lyric poet in the Italian literary tradition. In spite of this reputation, and in spite of a number of nineteenth-and twentieth-century translations, Leopardi's poems have never "come over" into English in such a way as to guarantee their author a recognition comparable to that of other great European Romantic poets.
By catching something of Leopardi's cadences and tonality in a version that still reads as idiomatic modern English (with an occasional Irish or American accent), Leopardi: Selected Poems should win for the Italian poet the wider appreciative audience he deserves. His themes are mutability, landscape, love; his attitude, one of unflinching realism in the face of unavoidable human loss. But the manners of the poems are a unique amalgam of philosophical toughness and the lyrically bittersweet. In a way more pure and distilled than most others in the Western tradition, these poems are truly what Matthew Arnold asked all poetry to be, a "criticism of life." The translator's aim is to convey something of the profundity and something of the sheer poetic achievement of Leopardi's inestimable Canti.

Genres: Poetry, Italian Literature, Fiction, Classics, Italy

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Italian scholar, poet, essayist and philosopher, one of the great writers of the 19th century.
Leopardi's love problems inspired some of his saddest lyrics. Despite having lived in a small town, Leopardi was in touch with the main ideas of the Enlightenment movement. His literary evolution turned him into one of the well known Romantic poets.
In his late years, when he lived in an ambiguous relationship with his friend Antonio Ranieri on the slopes of Vesuvius, Leopardi meditated upon the possibility of the total destruction of humankind.
Leopardi was a contemporary of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, with whom he shared a similarly pessimistic view of life. The latter praised Leopardi's philosophical thoughts on The World as Will and Representation.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life is nothing
But blankness of spirit, a bitter taste, and the world
Mud. Now rest in peace.

Yesterday affixed a rather grim grip and this collection didn’t fare well. Today is just as golden but blessed with a giddy breeze. I returned to reread and found the insights if not charms of such resilience. There’s not much caprice on display. Leopardi’s observations appear worn, scarred and regret remains the region’s argot.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silvia, do you remember
those moments, in your mortal life,
when beauty still shone
in your sidelong, laughing eyes,
and you, light and thoughtful,
leapt beyond girlhood’s limits?

The quiet rooms and the streets
around you, sounded
to your endless singing,
when you sat, happily content,
intent on that woman’s work,
the vague future, arriving alive in your mind.
It was the scented May, and that’s how
you spent your day.

I would leave my intoxicating studies,
and the turned-down pages,
where my young life,
the best of me, was left,
and from the balcony of my father’s house
strain to catch the sound of your voice,
and your hand, quick,
running over the loom.
I’d look at the serene sky,
the gold lit gardens and paths:
this side the mountains, that side the far-off sea.
And human tongue cannot say
what I felt then.

What sweet thoughts,
what hope, what hearts, O my Silvia!
How all human life and fate
appeared to us then!
When I recall that hope
such feelings pain me,
harsh, disconsolate,
I brood on my own destiny.
Oh Nature, Nature
why do you not give now
what you promised then? Why
do you so deceive your children?

Attacked, and conquered, by secret disease,
you died, my tenderest one, and did not see
your years flower, or feel your heart moved,
by sweet praise of your black hair
your shy, loving looks.
No friends talked with you,
on holidays, about love.

My sweet hopes died also
little by little: to me too
Fate has denied those years.
Oh, how you’ve passed me by,
dear friend of my new life,
my saddened hope!
Is this the world, the dreams,
the loves, events, delights,
we spoke about so much together?

Is this our human life?
At the advance of Truth
you fell, unhappy one,
and from the distance,
with your hand you pointed
towards death’s coldness and the silent grave.

[Sleepydrummer · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Giacomo Leopardi's poetry you'll find a man who writes of love in many forms; love of nature, unrequited love, love of all he hears. The clarity of this man's poetry is acute.

"Sometimes, getting up
From the books I loved
And those sweat-stained pages
Where I spent the best of my youth,
I'd lean from the terrace of my father's house
Toward the sound of your voice
And the quick click of your hands
At the heavy loom. Wonder-struck, I'd stare
Up at the cloudless blue of the sky,
Out at the kitchen gardens and the roads
That shone like gold, and off there
To the mountains and, there, to the distant sea.
No human tongue could tell
The feelings beating in my heart."

As beautiful as these words are, the original Italian verses are arranged to the left of each english translation, on the opposite page. This is a thoughtful selection of Leopardi's poetry, beautifully translated by Eamon Grennan. I encourage my friends to indulge themselves in the written works of Giacomo Leopardi.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years ago, I used to like poetry so much that I have learned by heart twenty or thirty of my favorite poems. I still know some of the lines, but for a long period I have stayed away from verse and read other literature.

“A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever”

Here are some of the lines I liked:

“If this is love, how hard it is to bear!

None on earth resembles thee…

Children of Fate, in the same breath

Created were they, Love and Death….

I can only imagine how beautiful it would all sound in Italian. Translated in English, this poetry did not move me as much as I hoped. It may be that I no longer have the age when I was so touched by beautiful verse? I am not sure.

[Krishna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dual language edition of 16 poems, the Italian on the left and an English translation by Eamon Grennan on the right. Leopardi was an early 19th century poet, a child prodigy who taught himself a dozen classical and modern European languages. He literally ruined his health reading, and was dead by the time he reached his late thirties.

Maybe I would be more positive about Leopardi if I could read his original Italian, but these poems were a letdown -- part odes to nature and part philosophical musings, many seem to be motivated by thwarted love. There is an introspective and self-pitying tone to the poems, more appropriate to the socially awkward sophomore wasting away yearning for unrequited love -- which was probably not that different from Leopardi's real-life situation. He does have a knack for nature description, in poems such as The Calm After the Storm.

[Abbi Dion · Rating 5 out of 5]

La Sera Del Di' Di Festa (Sunday Evening) is almost overwhelming in its beauty and depth.

When I was a child, I used to wait
In a fever of desire for Sunday,
And when it was over I'd lie awake
Brokenhearted, sobbing to my pillow;
And then, in the small hours, a song
I'd hear dying away little by little
Through the back streets of town
Would make my heart ache as it's aching now.

-from Sunday Evening

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not much of a poetry person, so I think a lot of this was lost on me, but the poem about the flower that grows out of the ashes of Vesuvius was gorgeous and alone was worth reading this collection.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

this stuff is really sad, really beautiful
pretty much the two best things ever for a book to be!

[Gino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Studied it in Fac de Lyon, long time ago

[Nick Ziegler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the most intensely beautiful, intellectually satisfying poems I've read. Easy to see why Nietzsche has been among Leopardi's translators.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poetry is worthy of 5 stars but this thin book is not much of a value.

[Tim Parks · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine, manageable collection beautifully translated

[Theron Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars.

[Kinsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh not my favorite poetry

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

My boy Giacomo was sad as heck

[saya]

Oliver found out that Elio like him when they were talking about Leopardi.