To Himself by Leopardi: text, paraphrase and analysis. Love as the ultimate deception, the last of illusions. The songs of the Aspasia cycle.
To Himself by Leopardi: text and paraphrase
Text
Now you will rest forever, 1
My tired heart. Perished the ultimate deception, That
I believed myself eternal. Perished. I feel good,
In usof dear deceptions,
Not that hope, desire is extinguished. 5
Pose forever. You palpitated a lot
.
Your movements are worth nothing , nor is
the earth worthy of your sighs.
Life is bitter and boring , nothing else ever; and the world is mud. 10
Calm down now. Despair
The last time. Fate
has granted our kind only death. Now despise
Thee, nature, the ugly
Power that, hidden, reigns to the common harm, 15
And the infinite vanity of all.
To himself: analysis
Statue of Giacomo Leopardi in Recanati — Source: ansa
The End of Love for Aspasia
To Himself , a lyric probably composed in May 1833 , is linked to a specific page of Leopardi’s biography : the end of the passion the poet had for the fascinating Fanny Targioni Tozzetti . This short poem was published for the first time in the Neapolitan edition of the Canti (1835), and is part of the Florentine songs section .
To himself by Leopard, a dramatic soliloquy
The Fall of the Last Illusion
To fully understand the meaning of A se medesimo, a narrative reading of the Canti is necessary , that is, a reading that takes into account the poems that precede it in the collection, Il pensiero doppiamente and Amore e Morte : while in the former the power of the feeling of love was celebrated, in the latter we register the devastating effects of the end of that last illusion, of that “extreme deception” (v. 2).
A tombstone for the senselessness of all things
The title announces a soliloquy which, due to its mortuary content, takes the form of a tomb inscription. The subject closes in on himself and invites his heart to abandon life, hope, and heartbeats, to acknowledge the senselessness of all things and to despise himself and the rest of the world.
Insights
The Infinite by Giacomo Leopardi
The Collapse of Poetic Form
The collapse of desire and life translates into a collapse of poetic form : unlike the elaborate rhetoric of the songs , the sentences that make up this text are truncated, fragmented, often give the impression of being incomplete and suspended, and follow one another tumultuously, like tremors of disgust and anger.
Energy and stylistic violence
Unlike the idylls and songs of Pisa and Recanati , there is no search for sweetness and fluidity of sound, but, on the contrary, there is the choice of a form charged with energy and violence.
