Giacomo Leopardi

For this reason there is none of it today.

There is indeed another kind of greatness, or rather largeness of mind, which consists in being a synthesis of humanity in its current phases, even if without prophetic emphasis or direction, the breadth of a Goethe rather than the fineness of a Shelley or a Leopardi.

But such largeness of mind, not to be vulgar, must be impartial, comprehensive, Olympian.

It would not be greatness if its miscellany were not dominated by a clear genius, and if before the confusion of things the poet or philosopher were not himself delighted, exalted, and by no means confused.

And that is all we experience in life, which is defined as becoming.

Now, in the 1800s, Giacomo Leopardi, who is an Italian poet, a wonderful poet in Italian, he died very young, I think he was not even 40, and wrote a book of philosophy that is mind-blowing, one page after the other, okay? he thought and identified the collapse of modern philosophy in the criticism to this process defined by Plato, because he said that maybe it's not looking the right way, because Plato goes from production into destruction into production, which anyway implies an element of destruction, but he goes, now with advancement also in science, we now know that we might go from one big bang into a big bang.

The reality might be that we go from nothingness into something, into nothingness.

So Leopardo goes, the only third of thing might be nothingness, a universe that like goes through a big bang into another one.

But that same concept is very scary because we don't want to keep on thinking every moment that we are a pale blue dot in the cosmos and just like a meteor, it might hit the Earth and then we are blown up.

So...

Why? I missed this little point.

If the more we investigate the universe, the more we learn that essentially we are insignificant, okay? Knowledge will not give us happiness, but anguish, right? And that's true, because when you think about it, the moment you start pondering about the universe, yes, it can be fascinating, but like, who am I? What are we doing here, right? Are we really singular, right? Or are we just like a nuisance in the cosmos? So now...

There is indeed another kind of greatness, or rather largeness of mind, which consists in being a synthesis of humanity in its current phases, even if without prophetic emphasis or direction.

The breadth of a Goethe rather than the fineness of a Shelley or a Leopardi.

But such largeness of mind, not to be vulgar, must be impartial, comprehensive, Olympian.

It would not be greatness if its miscellany were not dominated by a clear genius, and if before the confusion of things the poet or philosopher were not himself delighted, exalted, and by no means confused.

Mr. Swinburne, so to speak, blew the dust from Wuthering Heights.

And now it keeps its proper rank in the shelf where Coleridge and Webster, Hoffman and Leopardi have their place.

Until then a few brave lines of welcome from Sidney Dobell, one fine verse of Mr. Arnold's, one notice from Mr. Reed, was all the praise that had been given to the book by those in authority.

Here and there a mill girl in the West Riding factories read and reread the tattered copy from the lending library.

Had the poem ended here, it would have been perfect, but it and many more of these lyrics have the uncertainty of close that usually marks early work.

Often incoherent too, the pictures of a dream rapidly succeeding each other without logical connection, yet scarcely marred by the incoherence, since the effect they seek to produce is not an emotion, not a conviction, but an impression of beauty or horror or ecstasy.

The uncertain outlines are bathed in a vague golden air of imagination and are shown to us with the magic touch of a Coleridge, a Leopardi, the touch which gives a mood, a scene, with scarce an obvious detail of either mood or scene.

We may not understand the purport of the song.

"She is ugly and old and very cross, but I love her all the same, for she loves me and means well.

And oh, she tells such lovely, lovely stories, and can repeat poetry by Dante and Ariosto and Leopardi for ever so long.

I can repeat poetry also," she added hastily with the complacency of a child.

"I know lots of Homer and of Shakespeare and of Keats and—" "Stop, stop," interrupted Gerald hastily.

In one sense, I think that my verses, mental and thin as their texture may be, represent a true inspiration, a true docility.

A muse, not exactly an English muse, actually visited me in my isolation, the same or a ghost of the same that visited Boethius or Alfred de Musset or Leopardi.

It was literally impossible for me then not to re-echo her eloquence.

When that compulsion ceased, I ceased to write verses.

For this reason there is none of it today.

There is indeed another kind of greatness, or rather largeness of mind, which consists in being a synthesis of humanity in its current phases, even if without prophetic emphasis or direction, the breadth of a Goethe rather than the fineness of a Shelley or a Leopardi.

But such largeness of mind, not to be vulgar, must be impartial, comprehensive, Olympian.

It would not be greatness if its miscellany were not dominated by a clear genius, and if before the confusion of things the poet or philosopher were not himself delighted, exalted, and by no means confused.

So they wanted to be relevant, you know.

So I was still teaching them Cicero and Leopardi, you know.

Which does raise the question I ask in every episode.

Who are you reading now?