Geltrude Cassi Lazzari
Geltrude Cassi (1791-1853), and her brother Francesco (1768-1846), were cousins of Monaldo. Geltrude married Count Giovanni Giuseppe Lazzari in 1808 (their daughter Vittoria Lazzari Regnoli was later to become Paolina’s friend and correspondent).
Between 11th and 14th December 1817, a visit from the Lazzari family to the Leopardi palace was the occasion for Giacomo’s first love. Here is how he described his feelings and his encounter with Geltrude in Diario del primo amore/Diary of my first love, composed between 14th and 23rd December:
Io cominciando a sentire l’impero della bellezza, da più d’un anno desiderava di parlare e conversare, come tutti fanno, con donne avvenenti, delle quali un sorriso solo, per rarissimo caso gittato sopra di me, mi pareva cosa stranissima e maravigliosamente dolce e lusinghiera: e questo desiderio nella mia forzata solitudine era stato vanissimo fin qui. Ma la sera dell’ultimo Giovedì, arrivò in casa nostra ... una Signora Pesarese ... di ventisei anni ... alta e membruta quanto nessuna donna ch’io m’abbia veduta mai, di volto però tutt’altro che grossolano, lineamenti tra il forte e il delicato, bel colore, occhi nerissimi, capelli castagni, maniere benigne, e, secondo me, graziose, lontanissime dalle affettate ...
I beginning to feel the empire of beauty, had for more than a year nurtured the desire to speak and converse, as all do, with comely women, whose mere smile, in that rare case in which it was thrown my way, was for me something strange and marvellously sweet and enticing: and this desire in my forced solitude had remained vane till here. But the evening of last Thursday, there came to our house ... a Lady from Pesaro ... aged twenty six ... tall and fine of limb as no woman I had ever seen, of face anything but peasant like, at once strong and delicate, fine colour, get black eyes, brown hair, mild of manners, and, in my opinion, gracious, far from any kind of affectation ...
The relationship between the two of course never became confidential, and Leopardi’s love proved to be passing (seeing her again in 1818 he felt no passion; and wrote of her to Carlo almost ten years later, on 30th April 1827: “Geltrude is keeping perfectly, indeed she is less fat and more florid than when we saw her last”).
What is important for us readers is the creative result of that experience: his Diario del primo amore, the Canto Il primo amore/First Love, and Elegia II, partially picked up again in the Frammento XXXVIII. And perhaps, the figure of Geltrude still reverberates in the image of Nature, in the Operetta Natura e Islandese: “a decidedly large woman ... her face half beautiful half terrible, with the blackest of eyes and hair”.
