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The ‘hermite des Apennins’: Leopardi and the Antologia in 1824–26

2012; Routledge; Volume: 17; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1354571x.2012.718552

1469-9583

Martin Thom,

Literature and Cultural Memory

Abstract The relationship between the poet Giacomo Leopardi and the Florentine journal, the Antologia, has long been the subject of scholarly dispute, of relevance also to the vexed question of the poet's relationship to the Risorgimento. My essay addresses this question by way of a study of the invitation extended to Leopardi by Gian Piero Vieusseux to write a regular column in the guise of a ‘hermite des Apennins’. I seek to shed light upon Leopardi's refusal by considering the journalistic genre, created by Etienne de Jouy, to which this invitation refers, and its relationship to the more general, climatological literature of custom and character. I also scrutinise other writings upon which Leopardi was then engaged, namely, the Discorso sopra gli costumi degli Italiani and the Zibaldone. The essay concludes with some comments upon the years in Naples, and upon the complex relationship between Leopardi's Florentine and Neapolitan periods. Keywords: Leopardi Antologia JouyRisorgimentoFlorenceNaples Notes 1 A lengthy, acrimonious dispute regarding Leopardi's apparent failure fully to engage with the moderate liberal culture of Tuscany may be reconstructed through Carpi (1974) and Timpanaro (1982). 2 Though the original idea for the Antologia had probably derived from Foscolo, by way of Gino Capponi, who visited London in 1819. 3 The central importance of voyages in the 1820s to natural scientists is reflected in the coverage given to them by the all-powerful Baron Cuvier himself, see Annales des Sciences Naturelles, launched in 1824. 4 The edition used is Leopardi, Zibaldone di pensieri, edited by Giuseppe Pacella, Milan Citation1991, 3 vols, but here I give my own version while also following the usual convention and simply citing Leopardi’s own page number and date. The first complete, annotated English edition, Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone, ed. Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux and London, Penguin is due to be published in 2013. 5 Though some contributors – for example, Romagnosi, Montani and Cattaneo – had altogether distinct cultural and political allegiances. 6 Note that the English translation of 1815 was entitled Paris Spectator. Hermits also featured in poems written in the 1820s by, for example, Carlo Pepoli, a Bolognese friend of Leopardi, and Giovanni Berchet. 7 Vieusseux's proposal to have one hermit in the Apennines and one on the banks of the Arno was clearly borrowed from Les Hermites en Liberté, par E. Jouy et A.J., Paris Citation1824 which placed Jouy and Jay on opposite banks of the Seine. 8 The observer of Italian manners was a Cavalier De Angelis, who served up very stale accounts of brigands and lazzaroni, thus pandering to British preconceptions about southern Italy. 9 In the guise of Patrofilo, ‘Romito dell’Appennino’, Giuseppe Bianchetti was also invited to write for the Antologia, see Pietro Giordani, 24 July [1831], to Vieusseux, in Giordani (Citation1997: 104). 10 Surprisingly enough, the Arcades project contains only one, indirect reference to Jouy, see Benjamin (Citation1999: 836). 11 For my dating, see Dondero (Citation2000), and contrast Savarese (Citation1995). 12 The theory of pleasure in fact permeates the Operette morali. 13 Note Leopardi's debt to Lockean sensationalism, as relayed by the idéologues, and to the materialist wing of the French Enlightenment (in particular, Helvétius, Holbach, Maupertuis), and see Timpanaro (Citation1965). 14 Leopardi was not drawn to the discourse on race assuming increasing prominence in the 1820s in European science, in part because of his residual loyalty to the Old Testament narratives, and therefore to monogenism. Note, however, that William-Frédéric Edwards, later the founder of the Société ethnologique de Paris, was known personally to Vieusseux and had visited the Palazzo Buondelmonti in Florence. See also Bassevi (Citation1825). 15 Remarks written just before Leopardi drafted the Discorso. 16 For a synoptic study of climatic determinism, see Glacken (Citation1967). 17 There is as yet no wholly satisfactory study of Leopardi's debt to Staël, but see Damiani (Citation1994: 149–71). 18 Note that the Montpellier vitalists were also prepared to criticize what they construed as Montesquieu's physicalist determinism, and to concede much to the influence of governments and laws. See Barthez (Citation1806: 271–2, and Citation1778: 310ff.), for criticisms of ‘the great Montesquieu’. 19 Compare Ampère (Citation1828), where the Bohemians are described as ‘véritablement des méridionaux égarés au nord’. 20 Book 6 is entitled ‘Les moeurs et le caractère des Italiens’. 21 Note that book 4 of De l'Allemagne is entitled ‘La Religion et l'Enthousiasme’, and see, in particular, chs. 10–12. 22 Despite what Augusto Placanica has argued in his introduction and notes to the edition of Leopardi's Discorso used here, I accept the case made by Dondero Citation2000. 23 We should ponder, for example, Leopardi's proposal to Stella, in 1826, that he translate sections of an English periodical for insertion into the Ricoglitore, and his note to himself in 1828 to compose ‘Articoli di un Giornale Settimanale. Osservatore o Spettatore ec.’ See Donati (Citation1988), and Leopardi, ‘Disegni letterari, XII’, in Leopardi (Citation1969: I, 372). 24 Note that Antonio Ranieri and Giovanni Freppa were centrally involved in the plan to launch the new periodical, though the request for permission to publish was rejected at an early stage. 25 Contrast Leopardi's remarks about the present and the future, and the role of illusions, in Leopardi (Citation1989: 134–5). 26 Levi also suggested that the 20th Pensieri was meant to be included in the Spettatore fiorentino but other scholars have disputed this claim. 27 See also Foscolo (Citation1824: 152–3). 28 Alexander Dumas (Père) (Citation1851: I, 53), an account of Neapolitan life based upon a visit made in 1835, and see also I, 37 for a fuller description of Via Toledo: ‘la rue des restaurans, des cafés, des boutiques … [c]'est aussi le premier pas fait par Naples vers la civilisation moderne, telle que l'entendent nos progressistes; c'est le lien qui réunie la cité poétique et la cité industrielle … la rue de Toledo est pavée en lave comme Herculaneum et Pompeïa, et éclairée au gaz comme Londres et Paris’. See also Thomas Carlyle, letter of 31 July 1832 to his brother John, travelling physician to the Countess of Clare: ‘I often figure you on the Toledo-Street, with lemonade booths and macaroni-cookeries, and loud-singing multitudes’, Carlyle and Carlyle (Citation1970-: VI, 193). For further detail regarding Via Toledo, see Croce ([1933] Citation1954), Cione (Citation1944) and Fino (Citation2008, ch. 2). 29 Leopardi, Palinodia al Marchese Gino Capponi, ll. 13–20, I nuovi credenti, ll. 7ff, together with the depiction of Count Leccafondi in the Paralipomeni. See Marti (Citation1988) for some general remarks about Leopardi, Florence and Naples, together with some specific references to Via Toledo. More generally, an intriguing point of comparison would be with Costumbrismo, and with Spanish journalists who had been influenced by Jouy. See, for example, Mariano José de Larra, ‘El Café’ [1828], and ‘Quién es el publico y dónde se encuentra? (Artículo mutilado, o sea refundido. Hermite de la Chaussée D'antin.)’ [1832] in Larra (Citation1993, pp. 111–26, 126–37). Valuable insights as to the relationship between Leopardi's Neapolitan poems and caricatures in the field of visual art, of equal relevance to the Spanish case, may be found in Savarese (Citation1998). 30 ‘Agli amici suoi di Toscana’ [dedication to the 1831, Florentine edition of the Canti], in Leopardi (Citation1969: I, 53). Some of the Neapolitan poems bear traces, however, of Florentine locales, a blurring of lines noted by Marti (Citation1988) – who reflects upon Leopardi's Florentine friendships with Neapolitan exiles – and confirmed by the launch in Naples, in 1832, of Il Progresso, a journal which was to some degree the heir to the Antologia (but contrast Galante Garrone Citation1979: 188–94).