Volume 47, Number 5 · March 23, 2000
In Love with Leopardi
By Tim Parks
Leopardi: A Study in Solitude
by Iris Origo
Books & Co./Helen Marx Books, 386 pp., $16.95 (paper)
Images and Shadows: Part of a Life
by Iris Origo
Godine, 276 pp., $15.95 (paper)
All'apparir del vero: Vita di Giacomo Leopardi
by Rolando Damiani
Milan: Mondadori, 529 pp., L40,000
His mother rejoiced when her children died in infancy. They would go straight to heaven and would not weigh upon the family budget. Great poet though he might become, Giacomo Leopardi would always have problems with faith and thrift. His father, Count Monaldo Leopardi, had squandered the family fortune through 'generosity, pride, or folly' and was deprived by papal order of the right to handle money. Pious and penny-pinching, his wife, Marchesa Adelaide, took over the management of their estates. This was in 1803, on the dusty hills above the southern Adriatic, scorching in summer, freezing in winter. The noble couple were in their mid-twenties and their firstborn son was then just five.
Review, 5893 words
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