Ephemera: The Feeling of Time in Leopardi’s ‘Canto notturno’
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 67; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Italiano
10.1179/174861812x13202431699750
ISSN1748-6181
Autores ResumoAbstractIn both the Zibaldone and the Operette morali, Leopardi meditates on the subjective perception of the flow of time and represents the intensity of existence with two antithetical models: the bird and the ephemeron. Through an analysis of internal references and external sources, this article attempts to show how the image of the ‘vecchio canuto’ in the ‘Canto notturno’ is intertwined with that of the ephemeron, and to highlight their shared metaphorical value. Moreover, it seeks to interpret the subliminal appearance of the ephemeron alongside the bird in the final stanza of the poem, where the three considerations introduced by ‘forse’ register three precise stages of consciousness, which represent a shift from an inner experience of time to an extra-temporal reality.Keywords: Leopardiephemerontimeintensitydreamconsciousness Notes* I wish to thank Michael Caesar, whose suggestion first inspired the idea for this article.1 This title appeared for the first time in the 1835 Starita edition of the Canti. In the first Piatti edition of 1831 the poem was published under the title ‘Canto notturno d’un pastore vagante dell’Asia’. Unless otherwise indicated, all works by Leopardi are quoted from the following edition: Tutte le poesie e tutte le prose, ed. by Lucio Felici and Emanuele Trevi (Rome: Newton Compton, 1997), hereafter cited as TPP.2 Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone, ed. by Lucio Felici (Rome: Newton Compton, 1997). All further references are to this edition (hereafter cited as Zib.), with the corresponding page numbers of the manuscript and the date of composition of the fragments.3 The so-called ‘Aspasia cycle’, first published in the Starita edition of the Canti of 1835, is comprised of the following poems: ‘Il pensiero dominante’ (1831), ‘Amore e morte’ (1832), ‘Consalvo’ (1832), ‘A se stesso’ (1833), ‘Aspasia’ (1834). For the dynamics of memory in the Canti and for the poetics of the present as a feature of the ‘Aspasia cycle’, see the following studies by Margaret Brose: ‘Moontime and Memory: Leopardi’s ‘Alla luna’’, Stanford Italian Review, 9·1–2 (1990), 155–79, and ‘Posthumous Poetics: Leopardi’s ‘A se stesso’’, Lingua e stile, 24·1 (1989), 89–114.4 Pamela Williams, ‘Relativism, Mortal Despair, and ‘Canto notturno’’, Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, 7 (1999), 99–111 (p. 99).5 Leopardi read Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding in Francesco Soave’s translation of the abridged version by Dr Winne: Saggio filosofico sull’umano intelletto, compendiato dal Dott. Winne e tradotto da Francesco Soave (Venice: Baglioni, 1794). The catalogue of the Biblioteca Leopardi also lists the French version of the essay: Essai philosophique concernent l’Entendement humain traduit de l’anglais par Pierre Costet (Amsterdam, 1723) (‘Catalogo della Biblioteca Leopardi in Recanati’, Atti e memorie della Regia Deputazione di Storia patria per le provincie delle Marche, 7·4 (1899), 1–391 (p. 203)). Soave also made Leopardi aware of Condillac’s Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines, which he discussed in the preface to the second book of his Saggio. The works of the Idéologues were mostly mediated to Leopardi by second-hand sources and through literary and scientific journals. For further details regarding the influence of the Lockean tradition see: Stefano Gensini, Linguistica leopardiana (Bologna: Il mulino, 1984), Bortolo Martinelli, Leopardi tra Leibniz e Locke (Rome: Carocci, 2003); Giorgio Panizza, ‘Letture di un momento: un’indagine sui periodici’, in Gli strumenti di Leopardi. Repertori, dizionari, periodici, ed. by Maria Maddalena Lombardi (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2000), pp. 145–59.6 Julia Kristeva, Sémiotiké. Recherches pour une sémanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1969) p. 146.7 Daniel L. Schacter, ‘Implicit Memory: History and Current Status’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learn- ing, Memory and Cognition, 13, (1987), 501–18, reproduced in Frontiers in Cognitive Neuroscience, ed. by Stephen M. Kosslyn and Richard A. Andersen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 527–47 (p. 527).8 Evelyne Ender, Architexts of Memory. Literature, Science, and Autobiography (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 175.9 The edition of Genovesi’s Meditazioni filosofiche sulla religione e sulla morale used by Leopardi was published by Remondini in Bassano in 1783. I refer to the 1798 edition from the same publisher. In the Zibaldone the passage from Genovesi is in italics.10 Italics in the original. Unless otherwise indicated, all further italics are mine.11 The complete titles of the four Meditazioni are as follows: Meditazione I: Chi son Io? Piacere dell’esistenza. I mali di questa vita non son tanti, che ci abbiano a cagionar la noia dell’esistenza. Poter essere, che noi non finiamo d’esistere giammai. Meditazione seconda: Chi son io? Natura dell’uomo. Meditazione terza: Dove son io? Estensione, magistero, e bellezza di questa Università di cose: del Fato materiale. Meditazione quarta: Da chi son’ io? Esistenza del Primo Essere: sue principali proprietà: del Fato divino.12 Bortolo Martinelli, ‘Ed io che sono?’: l’interrogativo del ‘Canto notturno’, Otto/Novecento, 27·3 (2003), 5–70 (pp. 27–44).13 Antonio Genovesi, Meditazioni filosofiche sulla religione e sulla morale (Bassano: Remondini, 1798), p. 17.14 Genovesi, p. 78.15 Genovesi, pp. 82–83.16 Genovesi, p. 83.17 Genovesi, pp. 18–20.18 See Zib., 3509–10, 24 September 1823.19 For a detailed analysis of the concept of boredom in Leopardi, see Alessandra Aloisi, ‘Fisica e metafisica della noia nelle Operette morali di Leopardi’, Rivista Internazionale di Studi Leopardiani, 6 (2010), 61–78.20 See also the comparison between men and women in Zib., 3898 (22 November 1823).21 Franco D’Intino, L’immagine della voce. Leopardi, Platone e il libro morale (Venice: Marsilio, 2009), p. 35 (italics in the original).22 The Elogio was composed between 29 October and 5 November 1824, only a few months after the Dialogo di un Fisico e di un Metafisico which was written between 14 and 19 May in the same year.23 D’Intino, L’immagine, p. 29.24 ‘brochures’ (italics in the original).25 Encyclopédie méthodique, ou par ordre de matières; par une Société de Gens de Lettres, de Savans, et d’Artistes. Histoire naturelle. Insectes (Paris: Panckoucke, 1791), vi.26 Italics in the original.27 Encyclopédie méthodique, pp. 404–05.28 Francesco Saverio Salfi, ‘Elogio di P. L. Ginguené’, Antologia, 12·35 (1823), 69–100 (pp. 76–77).29 Giovanni Andres, Dell’origine, de’ progressi e dello stato attuale d’ogni letteratura, 8 vols (Parma: Stamperia Reale, 1785), i, 455–56.30 I am quoting from the official website of the John Jonhson Collection of Printed Ephemera, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford: [accessed 29 August 2010].31 D’Intino, L’immagine, pp. 209–54.32 The power of the word (‘parola’) to evoke ‘idee concomitanti’ is the basis of the distinction between ‘parole’ and ‘termini’ that Leopardi borrows from Cesare Beccaria’s Ricerche intorno alla natura dello stile (Milan: Giuseppe Galeazzi, 1770). See in particular chapters I and II. See also Zib., 1234–45, 28 June 1821.33 Christopher J. Berry, ‘Eighteenth-Century Approaches to the Origin of Metaphors’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 74 (1973), 690–713 (p. 690).34 Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, trans. by R. Czerny (Toronto and Buffalo: Toronto University Press, 1977), pp. 130–31. See also the chapter entitled ‘Semantics and Etymology’ in Stephen Ullmann, Language and Style (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964), pp. 29–49.35 Martinelli, ‘Ed io che sono?’, pp. 63–69.36 Pindar, The Olympian and Pythian Odes, ed. by C. A. M. Fennell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1893), p. 245. The text is available online at [accessed 29 November 2011].37 Lorenzo Polato, Il sogno di un’ombra (Venice: Marsilio, 2007), p. 90.38 Pindar, p. 245. See also Polato, pp. 91–95.39 TPP, p. 523.40 See Loretta Marcon, ‘La ragione, il corpo, la vita. Kant, Hufeland, Leopardi’, Rivista di letteratura italiana, 25·2 (2007), 49–70 (p. 61).41 Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, L’arte di prolungare la vita umana, Parte teoretica, trans. by Luigi Careno, 2 vols (Venice: Giuseppe Remondini, 1799), i, 79–80.42 Hufeland, p. 82.43 Hufeland, pp. 87–88. As for the simile adopted by Hufeland between the motion of birds and horse-riding, Leopardi also meditates on horse-riding in regard to the benefits of the simultaneity of sensations in Zib., 1999 (27 October 1821).44 TPP, p. 571.45 Martinelli, ‘Ed io che sono?’, p. 46 and n. 133, p. 62.46 See Martinelli, ‘Ed io che sono?’, pp. 44–51.47 ‘Nobs’ (italics in the original).48 ‘Nord’ (italics in the original).49 ‘Nobs’ (italics in the original).50 ‘Highate’ (italics in the original).51 Hufeland, pp. 122–25.52 Martinelli, ‘Ed io che sono?’, pp. 15–20.53 Alexander Pope, Saggio sull’uomo diviso in quattro lettere, trasportato dalla poesia inglese nell’italiana, Lettera prima, [s.n.t], (1776), p. 11, quoted in Martinelli, ‘Ed io che sono?’, p. 19.54 Encyclopédie méthodique, p. 404.55 Martinelli, ‘Ed io che sono?’, p. 45. For alternative sources for this line see Giacomo Leopardi, Canti, ed. by Franco Gavazzeni and Maria Maddalena Lombardi (Milan: BUR, 1998), p. 444.56 Encyclopédie méthodique, p. 404.57 Encyclopédie méthodique, p. 405.58 Encyclopédie méthodique, pp. 413–14.59 Paul-Henri Thiri D’Holbach, The System of Nature, or Laws of the Moral and Physical World, trans. by H. D. Robinson, 2 vols (New York: Matsell, 1836), i, 46. The original edition Système de la nature ou des loix du monde physique & du monde moral appeared in 1770. For the relation between man and nature in the scientific context related to Leopardi, see the chapter ‘Spettacolo senza spettatore. Dalla ‘Pietade illuminata’ al Dialogo di un Folletto e di uno Gnomo’, in Gaspare Polizzi, ‘... per le forze eterne della materia’. Natura e scienza in Giacomo Leopardi (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2008) pp. 55–102. For the relation between Leopardi and D’Holbach, see Bruno Biral, ‘Le due facce del ‘Sistema di Stratone’. Materialismo e Romanticismo in G. Leopardi’, in Joaquin Arce and others, Leopardi e l’Ottocento: atti del II convegno internazionale di studi leopardiani (Florence: Olschki 1970), pp. 49–64. See also Andrea Campana, Leopardi e le metafore scientifiche (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2008), pp. 50–52.60 Gideon Algerdon Mantell, The Wonders of Geology, 4th edn, 2 vols (London: Relfe and Fletcher, 1839), i, 22–23. The article ‘Colpo d’occhio su i progressi della Geologia; Articolo estratto dal Quarterly Review, con alcune note del traduttore’ where Mantell’s studies on geology were discussed, appeared in Antologia, 28 (1827), 1–41.61 See Giacomo Leopardi, Vita abbozzata di Silvio Sarno, in Scritti e frammenti autobiografici, ed. by Franco D’Intino (Rome: Salerno, 1995), n. 203, p. 110.62 Giambattista Roberti, Favole Esopiane, in Opere dell’abate Giambattista conte Roberti, 12 vols (Bassano: Remondini, 1789), x, 144–47.63 Giacomo Leopardi, Poesie e prose, ed. by Rolando Damiani and Mario Andrea Rigoni, 2 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 1988), ii, 1339.64 For the quotation see note 42.65 D’Intino, L’immagine, p. 46 (italics in the original). See also Sabine Verhulst’s comment on the immaginative status of birds: ‘gli uccelli, come i fanciulli, proprio in virtù della loro particolare esistenza cronospaziale risultano dotati di una metaforicità naturale volta a figurare l’immaginazione poetica’, Sabine Verhulst, ‘Buffon, l’‘Elogio degli uccelli’ e le figure dell’immaginazione in Leopardi’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale, 54 (1997), 135–53 (p. 147).66 ‘Nuova poetica leopardiana’ is Walter Binni’s definition of Leopardi’s poetry from the ‘Aspasia cycle’ onwards, which, according to the critic, was characterized by the presence of a new heroic philosophy and expression of feelings. See Walter Binni, La nuova poetica leopardiana (Florence: Sansoni, 1947).67 ‘Sopra il ritratto di una bella donna’ and ‘Sopra un basso rilievo antico sepolcrale’ were both composed either between 1831–35 or 1834–35.
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