Arefev Dmitry Andreevich – PhD student, Junior Researcher of the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Leading Librarian of the Interdisciplinary Research Center of the M.I. Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature; ORCID: 0000-0002-1346-2939
This article examines the distinctive features of the relationship between the Italian populace and tyrannical power as depicted in the early works of Giacomo Leopardi, the preeminent Italian lyric poet of the first half of the nineteenth century. Leopardi’s 1815 text, Agl’Italiani: Orazione in occasione della liberazione del Piceno, manifests a categorical rejection of tyranny, defines the authentic aspirations of the Italian people, and issues a call to liberation struggle – a theme subsequently elaborated in his poetic oeuvre. In the 1818 poems All’Italia and Sopra il monumento di Dante che si preparava in Firenze, the conflict between the populace and the tyrant acquires a philosophical framework, articulated more fully in Leopardi’s Zibaldone di pensieri. Both the prose work and the poetic texts interrogate the conduct of ancient versus modern humanity, a dichotomy Leopardi consistently resolves to the detriment of the latter. A comparative analysis of the Orazione in occasione della liberazione del Piceno and the later poems reveals a perceived deterioration in human nature since ancient times; consequently, despite heroic exemplars from the past, the struggle against tyranny in the modern world is ultimately rendered futile.
G. Leopardi; Canti; Zibaldone; nation; tyranny; Italy