Short essay on the comparison between Manzoni and Leopardi.
Comparison between Manzoni and Leopardi – Short essay
The 19th century, with the advent of Romanticism, changes all the balances, thoughts and ideologies that had been established during the 18th century with the Enlightenment. Two centuries close to each other but totally different from each other, the first (18th century) gives importance to reason and the second (19th century) to feeling.
The intellectuals who find themselves between these centuries have difficulty in outlining their own poetics and taking the paths of their own cultural thought.
Let us consider Giacomo Leopardi and Alessandro Manzoni , who are declared two typically romantic authors, but who were influenced by the cultural currents of the previous century. These two authors have many points of disagreement.
Leopardi was born in Recanati, a small peripheral village in the Marche, isolated from the culturally active environment of the cities. Manzoni, on the other hand, was born in Milan, a large city belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire where very important periodicals such as “Il Caffè”, “Il Conciliatore” and numerous intellectual gatherings were founded. Manzoni was influenced by his family environment, having as his mother the daughter of Cesare Beccaria, an illuminist, and as his presumed father another illuminist. He was subsequently sent to boarding school where he devoted himself to the study of ancient and modern classics, but receiving a rigid education, he distanced himself from Christianity for many years.
Thanks to his connections with Cuoco and Lomonaco, he developed a patriotic feeling and began to devote himself to historical studies, questioning his Enlightenment principles. With the French Ideologues, he explored the limits of the Enlightenment and dedicated himself definitively to historical studies and Romanticism.
Leopardi began his studies in the family library and at the age of eleven his cultural baggage was vast. He taught himself Greek, Latin and Hebrew. His cultural education changed continuously; in fact, after his small studies he dedicated himself to poetry, or rather the passage from erudition to beauty, which recalls classical myths and mythology; then the conversion from beauty to truth, with a poetry centered on sentiment and philosophy.
Unlike Manzoni, Leopardi does not have great relationships with the intellectuals of his time, as he does not accept their thought, centered on reason and no longer on imagination.
Both produce poetry, Leopardi writes odes, songs, idylls, but also uses prose. Manzoni instead writes prose essays, treatises and above all his masterpiece, I Promessi Sposi .
Leopardi is almost totally alien to the political sphere, while Manzoni gives great importance to politics, even experiencing it first hand.
Among Manzoni’s political works we find the ode “March 1821”: Manzoni wants to express the ideal of Italian unity, the overcoming of any division in the name of a common feeling that is love for the homeland.
Also important is the first chorus of Adelchi in which Manzoni defines the Italian people as the “scattered multitude that has no name” because the Italian people lack identity because they are forced to live under the tight control of other foreign peoples. In this passage Manzoni reveals all the bitterness of a people that does not find the courage to act and is always subjugated by the foreigner.
