Volume 34, Number 1 · January 29, 1987
The Strange Case of Leopardi
By D.S. Carne-Ross
The Moral Essays
by Giacomo Leopardi, translated by Patrick Creagh
Columbia University Press, 265 pp., $12.50 (paper)
Operette Morali: Essays and Dialogues
by Giacomo Leopardi, translated by Giovanni Cecchetti
University of California Press, 544 pp., $9.50 (paper)
Pensieri
by Giacomo Leopardi, translated by W. S. Di Piero
Oxford University Press, 180 pp., $6.95 (paper)
A Leopardi Reader
edited and translated by Ottavio Casale
University of Illinois Press, 271 pp., $8.95 (paper)
Universally recognized in his own country as one of the greatest of Italian writers, outside Italy Leopardi has uncertain status. In the nineteenth century he enjoyed a European reputation. Nietzsche praised him, Arnold and Sainte-Beuve admired and wrote about him, but in the present century his fame has receded. Although Pound translated one of his poems, he made little or no mark on the great modernists or influential critics, and critical discussion of Romanticism can still be conducted with little reference to his work. I think it is true to say that, except at home, Leopardi is not fully on the literary map.
Review, 4653 words
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