“L’Infinito” by Giacomo Leopardi
Deep analysis of a classic Italian poetry masterpiece
L’infinito (the infinite) is often considered one of the most (if not THE most) beautiful Italian poems ever written. This fame is due not only to its intrinsic artistic value, but to the extraordinary balance that is formed between language use, images, sensations and deep meanings of universal value.
Leopardi composed L’infinito between 1818 and 1819 in young years, in his hometown Recanati, in the Marche region. It is included in the Canti, his most famous poetic works and a cornerstone of Italian and worldwide literature.
But before the Canti, it was part of an early poems collection, called Idilli.
The greek term εἰδύλλιον (eidýllion), meaning idyll, usually referred to poetic compositions focused on the description of rural scenes, agreste landscapes.
With Leopardi, it undergoes a redefinition; in his idylls, the bucolic themes proper to the compositions written by the Greek and Latin poets (and later imitated in the humanistic and Renaissance age) are absent or transfigured.
The Leopardian idyll is a composition characterized by a strong lyrical intimism. In it, the element of natural landscape (often devoid of the characteristics of the ancient ideal landscape, like…
